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Nationalism

The term “nationalism” is generally used to describe two phenomena:

• the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and
• the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination.

(1) raises questions about the concept of a nation (or national identity), which is often defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and specifically about whether an individual’s membership in a nation should be regarded as non-voluntary or voluntary. (2) raises questions about whether self-determination must be understood as involving having full statehood with complete authority over domestic and international affairs, or whether something less is required.

Nationalism came into the focus of philosophical debate three decades ago, in the nineties, partly in consequence of rather spectacular and troubling nationalist clashes. Surges of nationalism tend to present a morally ambiguous, and for this reason often fascinating, picture. “National awakening” and struggles for political independence are often both heroic and cruel; the formation of a recognizably national state often responds to deep popular sentiment but sometimes yields inhuman consequences, from violent expulsion and “cleansing” of non-nationals to organized mass murder. The moral debate on nationalism reflects a deep moral tension between solidarity with oppressed national groups on the one hand and repulsion in the face of crimes perpetrated in the name of nationalism on the other. Moreover, the issue of nationalism points to a wider domain of problems related to the treatment of ethnic and cultural differences within democratic polity, arguably among the most pressing problems of contemporary political theory.

In the last two decades, migration crisis and the populist reactions to migration and domestic economic issues have been the defining traits of a new political constellation. The traditional issue of the contrast between nationalism and cosmopolitanism has changed its profile: the current drastic contrast is between populist aversion to the foreigners-migrants and a more generous, or simply just, attitude of acceptance and Samaritan help. The populist aversion inherits some features traditionally associated with patriotism and nationalism, and the opposite attitude the main features of traditional cosmopolitanism. One could expect that the work on nationalism will be moving further on this new and challenging playground, addressing the new contrast and trying to locate nationalism in relation to it.

In this entry, we shall first present conceptual issues of definition and classification (Sections 1 and 2) and then the arguments put forward in the debate (Section 3), dedicating more space to the arguments in favor of nationalism than to those against it in order to give the philosophical nationalist a proper hearing. In the last part we shall turn to the new constellation and sketch the new issues raised by nationalist and trans-nationalist populisms and the migration crisis.

1.1 The Basic Concept of Nationalism

1.2 the concept of a nation, 2.1 concepts of nationalism: classical and liberal, 2.2 moral claims, classical vs. liberal: the centrality of nation, 3.1 classical and liberal nationalisms, 3.2 arguments in favor of nationalism, classical vs. liberal: the deep need for community, 3.3 arguments in favor of nationalism: issues of justice, 3.4 populism and a new face of nationalism, 3.5 nation-state in global context, 4. conclusion, introduction, other internet resources, related entries, 1. what is a nation.

Although the term “nationalism” has a variety of meanings, it centrally encompasses two phenomena: (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their identity as members of that nation and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take in seeking to achieve (or sustain) some form of political sovereignty (see for example, Nielsen 1998–9: 9). Each of these aspects requires elaboration.

• raises questions about the concept of a nation or national identity, about what it is to belong to a nation, and about how much one ought to care about one’s nation. Nations and national identity may be defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and while an individual’s membership in the nation is often regarded as involuntary, it is sometimes regarded as voluntary. The degree of care for one’s nation that nationalists require is often, but not always, taken to be very high: according to such views, the claims of one’s nation take precedence over rival contenders for authority and loyalty. [ 1 ]
• raises questions about whether sovereignty requires the acquisition of full statehood with complete authority over domestic and international affairs, or whether something less than statehood suffices. Although sovereignty is often taken to mean full statehood (Gellner 1983: ch. 1), [ 2 ] possible exceptions have been recognized (Miller 1992: 87; Miller 2000). Some authors even defend an anarchist version of patriotism-moderate nationalism foreshadowed by Bakunin (see Sparrow 2007).

There is a terminological and conceptual question of distinguishing nationalism from patriotism. A popular proposal is the contrast between attachment to one’s country as defining patriotism and attachment to one’s people and its traditions as defining nationalism (Kleinig 2014: 228, and Primoratz 2017: Section 1.2). One problem with this proposal is that love for a country is not really just love of a piece of land but normally involves attachment to the community of its inhabitants, and this introduces “nation” into the conception of patriotism. Another contrast is the one between strong, and somewhat aggressive attachment (nationalism) and a mild one (patriotism), dating back at least to George Orwell (see his 1945 essay). [ 3 ]

Despite these definitional worries, there is a fair amount of agreement about the classical, historically paradigmatic form of nationalism. It typically features the supremacy of the nation’s claims over other claims to individual allegiance and full sovereignty as the persistent aim of its political program. Territorial sovereignty has traditionally been seen as a defining element of state power and essential for nationhood. It was extolled in classic modern works by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau and is returning to center stage in the debate, though philosophers are now more skeptical (see below). Issues surrounding the control of the movement of money and people (in particular immigration) and the resource rights implied in territorial sovereignty make the topic politically central in the age of globalization and philosophically interesting for nationalists and anti-nationalists alike.

In recent times, the philosophical focus has moved more in the direction of “liberal nationalism”, the view that mitigates the classical claims and tries to bring together the pro-national attitude and the respect for traditional liberal values. For instance, the territorial state as political unit is seen by classical nationalists as centrally “belonging” to one ethnic-cultural group and as actively charged with protecting and promulgating its traditions. The liberal variety allows for “sharing” of the territorial state with non-dominant ethnic groups. Consequences are varied and quite interested (for more see below, especially section 2.1 ).

In its general form, the issue of nationalism concerns the mapping between the ethno-cultural domain (featuring ethno-cultural groups or “nations”) and the domain of political organization. In breaking down the issue, we have mentioned the importance of the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity. This point raises two sorts of questions. First, the descriptive ones:

Second, the normative ones:

This section discusses the descriptive questions, starting with (1a) and (1b) ;the normative questions are addressed in Section 3 on the moral debate. If one wants to enjoin people to struggle for their national interests, one must have some idea about what a nation is and what it is to belong to a nation. So, in order to formulate and ground their evaluations, claims, and directives for action, pro-nationalist thinkers have expounded theories of ethnicity, culture, nation, and state. Their opponents have in turn challenged these elaborations. Now, some presuppositions about ethnic groups and nations are essential for the nationalist, while others are theoretical elaborations designed to support the essential ones. The definition and status of the social group that benefits from the nationalist program, variously called the “nation”, “ethno-nation”, or “ethnic group”, is essential. Since nationalism is particularly prominent with groups that do not yet have a state, a definition of nation and nationalism purely in terms of belonging to a state is a non-starter.

Indeed, purely “civic” loyalties are often categorized separately under the title “patriotism”, which we already mentioned, or “constitutional patriotism”. [ 4 ] This leaves two extreme options and a number of intermediates. The first extreme option has been put forward by a small but distinguished band of theorists. [ 5 ] According to their purely voluntaristic definition, a nation is any group of people aspiring to a common political state-like organization. If such a group of people succeeds in forming a state, the loyalties of the group members become “civic” (as opposed to “ethnic”) in nature. At the other extreme, and more typically, nationalist claims are focused upon the non-voluntary community of common origin, language, tradition, and culture: the classic ethno-nation is a community of origin and culture, including prominently a language and customs. The distinction is related (although not identical) to that drawn by older schools of social and political science between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism, the former being allegedly Western European and the latter more Central and Eastern European, originating in Germany. [ 6 ] Philosophical discussions centered on nationalism tend to concern the ethnic-cultural variants only, and this habit will be followed here. A group aspiring to nationhood on this basis will be called an “ethno-nation” to underscore its ethno-cultural rather than purely civic underpinnings. For the ethno-(cultural) nationalist it is one’s ethnic-cultural background that determines one’s membership in the community. One cannot choose to be a member; instead, membership depends on the accident of origin and early socialization. However, commonality of origin has become mythical for most contemporary candidate groups: ethnic groups have been mixing for millennia.

Sophisticated, liberal pro-nationalists therefore tend to stress cultural membership only and speak of “nationality”, omitting the “ethno-” part (Miller 1992, 2000; Tamir 1993,2013; Gans 2003). Michel Seymour’s proposal of a “socio-cultural definition” adds a political dimension to the purely cultural one: a nation is a cultural group, possibly but not necessarily united by a common descent, endowed with civic ties (Seymour 2000). This is the kind of definition that would be accepted by most parties in the debate today. So defined, the nation is a somewhat mixed category, both ethno-cultural and civic, but still closer to the purely ethno-cultural than to the purely civic extreme.

Let us now turn to the issue of the origin and “authenticity” of ethno-cultural groups or ethno-nations. In social and political science one usually distinguishes two kinds of views, but there is a third group, combining element from both. The first are modernist views that see nationalism as born in modern times, together with nation-states. [ 7 ] In our times the view was pioneered by Ernst Gellner (see his 1983). [ 8 ] Other modernist choose similar starting points with century or two of variation. [ 9 ] The opposite view can be called, following Edward Shils (1957) “primordialist”. According to it, actual ethno-cultural nations have either existed “since time immemorial”.

The third, quite plausible kind of view, distinct from both primordialism-ethno-symbolism and modernism, has been initiated by W. Connor (1994). [ 10 ] A nation is a politicized and mobilized ethnic group rather than a state. So, the origins of nationalism predate the modern state, and its emotional content remains up to our times (Conversi 2002: 270), but the actual statist organization is, indeed, modern. However, nation-state is a nationalist dream and fiction, never really implemented, due to the inescapable plurality of social groups. So much for the three dominant perspectives on the origin of nationalism.

Indeed, the older authors—from great thinkers like Herder and Otto Bauer to the propagandists who followed their footsteps—took great pains to ground normative claims upon firm ontological realism about nations: nations are real, bona fide entities. However, the contemporary moral debate has tried to diminish the importance of the imagined/real divide. Prominent contemporary philosophers have claimed that normative-evaluative nationalist claims are compatible with the “imagined” nature of a nation. [ 11 ] They point out that common imaginings can tie people together, and that actual interaction resulting from togetherness can engender important moral obligations.

Let us now turn to question (1c) about the nature of pro-national attitudes. The explanatory issue that has interested political and social scientists concerns ethno-nationalist sentiment, the paradigm case of a pro-national attitude. Is it as irrational, romantic, and indifferent to self-interest as it might seem on the surface? The issue has divided authors who see nationalism as basically irrational and those who try to explain it as being in some sense rational. Authors who see it as irrational propose various explanations of why people assent to irrational views. Some say, critically, that nationalism is based on “false consciousness”. But where does such false consciousness come from? The most simplistic view is that it is a result of direct manipulation of “masses” by “elites”. On the opposite side, the famous critic of nationalism Elie Kedourie (1960) thinks this irrationality is spontaneous. A decade and a half ago Liah Greenfeld went as far as linking nationalism to mental illness in her provocative 2005 article (see also her 2006 book). On the opposite side, Michael Walzer has offered a sympathetic account of nationalist passion in his 2002. Authors relying upon the Marxist tradition offer various deeper explanations. To mention one, the French structuralist Étienne Balibar sees it as a result of the “production” of ideology effectuated by mechanisms which have nothing to do with spontaneous credulity of individuals, but with impersonal, structural social factors (Balibar & Wallerstein 1988 [1991]). [ 12 ]

Some authors claim that it is often rational for individuals to become nationalists (Hardin 1985). Can one rationally explain the extremes of ethno-national conflict? Authors like Russell Hardin propose to do so in terms of a general view of when hostile behavior is rational: most typically, if an individual has no reason to trust someone, it is reasonable for that individual to take precautions against the other. If both sides take precautions, however, each will tend to see the other as increasingly inimical. It then becomes rational to start treating the other as an enemy. Mere suspicion can thus lead by small, individually rational steps to a situation of conflict. (Such negative development is often presented as a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma; see the entry on prisoner’s dilemma ). It is relatively easy to spot the circumstances in which this general pattern applies to national solidarities and conflicts (see also Wimmer 2013).

Finally, as for question (1d) , the nation is typically seen as an essentially non-voluntary community to which one belongs by birth and early nurture and such that the belonging is enhanced and made more complete by one’s additional conscious endorsement. Not everyone agrees: liberal nationalists accept the idea of choice of one’s national belonging and of possibility for immigrants to become nationals by choice and intentional acculturation.

2. Varieties of Nationalism

We pointed out at the very beginning of the entry that nationalism focuses upon (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) some form of political sovereignty. The politically central point is (2): the actions enjoined by the nationalist. To these we now turn, beginning with sovereignty and territory, the usual foci of a national struggle for independence. They raise an important issue:

The classical answer is that a state is required. A more liberal answer is that some form of political autonomy suffices. Once this has been discussed, we can turn to the related normative issues:

Consider first the classical nationalist answer to (2a) . Political sovereignty requires a state “rightfully owned” by the ethno-nation (Oldenquist 1997). Developments of this line of thought often state or imply specific answers to (2b) , and (2c) , i.e., that in a national independence struggle the use of force against the threatening central power is almost always a legitimate means for bringing about sovereignty. However, classical nationalism is not only concerned with the creation of a state but also with its maintenance and strengthening.

Classical nationalism is the political program that sees the creation and maintenance of a fully sovereign state owned by a given ethno-national group (“people” or “nation”) as a primary duty of each member of the group. Starting from the assumption that the appropriate (or “natural”) unit of culture is an ethno-nation, it claims that a primary duty of each member is to abide by one’s recognizably ethno-national culture in all cultural matters.

Classical nationalists are usually vigilant about the kind of culture they protect and promote and about the kind of attitude people have to their nation-state. This watchful attitude carries some potential dangers: many elements of a given culture that are universal or simply not recognizably national may fall prey to such nationalist enthusiasms. Classical nationalism in everyday life puts various additional demands on individuals, from buying more expensive home-produced goods in preference to cheaper imported ones to procreating as many future members of the nation as one can manage (see Yuval-Davies 1997, and Yack 2012).

Besides classical nationalism (and its more radical extremist cousins), various moderate views are also now classified as nationalist. Indeed, the philosophical discussion has shifted to these moderate or even ultra-moderate forms, and most philosophers who describe themselves as nationalists propose very moderate nationalist programs.

Nationalism in this wider sense is any complex of attitudes, claims, and directives for action ascribing a fundamental political, moral, and cultural value to nation and nationality and deriving obligations (for individual members of the nation, and for any involved third parties, individual or collective) from this ascribed value. The main representative of this group of views is liberal nationalism , proposed by authors like Miller, Tamir, and Gans (see below).

Nationalisms in this wider sense can vary somewhat in their conceptions of the nation (which are often left implicit in their discourse), in the grounds for and degree of its value, and in the scope of their prescribed obligations. Moderate nationalism is less demanding than classical nationalism and sometimes goes under the name of “patriotism.” (A different usage, again, reserves “patriotism” for valuing civic community and loyalty to state, in contrast to nationalism, centered on ethnic-cultural communities).

Let us now turn to liberal nationalism, the most discussed kind of moderate nationalism.

Liberal nationalists see liberal-democratic principles and pro-national attitudes as belonging together. One of the main proponents of the view, Yael Tamir, started the debate in her 1993 book and in her recent book talks about the nation-state as “an ideal meeting point between the two” (2019: 6). Of course, some things have to be sacrificed: we must acknowledge that either the meaningfulness of a community or its openness must be sacrificed to some extent as we cannot have them both. (2019: 57). How much of each is to give way is left open, and of course, various liberal nationalists take different views of what precisely the right answer is.

Tamir’s version of liberal nationalism is a kind of social liberalism, in this respect similar to the views of David Miller who talks about “solidaristic communities” in his 1999 book Principles of Social Justice and also takes stance in his 1995 and 2008 books. They both see the feeling of national identity as a feeling that promotes solidarity, and solidarity as means for increased social justice (Tamir 2019, in particular ch.20; compare Walzer 1983, Kymlicka 1995a, 2001, and Gans 2003, 2008).

Liberal nationalists diverge about the value of multiculturalism. Kymlicka takes it as basic for his picture of liberalism while Tamir dismisses it without much ado: multicultural, multiethnic democracies have a very poor track record, she claims (2019: 62). Tamir’s diagnosis of the present day political crisis, with politicians like Trump and Le Pen coming to the forefront, is that “liberal democrats were paralyzed by their assumed victory” whereas “nationalists felt defeated and obsolete” (2019: 7).

Tamir lists two kinds of reasons that guarantee special political status to nations. First kind, that no other political entity “is more able than the state to promote ideas in the public sphere” (2019: 52), and the second kind that nation needs continuous creative effort to make it functional and attractive.

The historical development of liberalism turned it into a universalistic, anti-communitarian principle; this has been a fatal mistake that can be and should be corrected by the liberal nationalist synthesis. Can we revive the unifying narratives of our nationality without sacrificing the liberal inheritance of freedom and rights? Liberal nationalism answers in the affirmative. From its standpoint, national particularism has primacy: “The love of humanity is a noble ideal, but real love is always particular…” (2019: 68).

Interestingly, Tamir combines this high regard of nation with an extreme constructivist view of its nature: nations are mental structures that exist in the minds of their members (2019: 58).

Is liberal nationalism implemented anywhere in the present world, or is it more of an ideal, probably end-state theory, that proposes a picture of a desirable society? Judging by the writings of liberal nationalists, it is the latter, although presented as a relatively easily reachable ideal, combining two traditions that are already well implemented in political reality.

The variations of nationalism most relevant for philosophy are those that influence the moral standing of claims and of recommended nationalist practices. The elaborate philosophical views put forward in favor of nationalism will be referred to as “theoretical nationalism”, the adjective serving to distinguish such views from less sophisticated and more practical nationalist discourse. The central theoretical nationalist evaluative claims can be charted on the map of possible positions within political theory in the following useful but somewhat simplified and schematic way.

Nationalist claims featuring the nation as central to political action must answer two crucial general questions. First, is there one kind of large social group that is of special moral importance? The nationalist answer is that there certainly is one, namely, the nation. Moreover, when an ultimate choice is to be made, say between ties of family, or friendship, and the nation, the latter has priority. Liberal nationalists prefer a more moderate stance, which ascribes value to national belonging, but don’t make it central in this way. Second, what are the grounds for an individual’s obligations to the morally central group? Are they based on voluntary or involuntary membership in the group? The typical contemporary nationalist thinker opts for the latter, while admitting that voluntary endorsement of one’s national identity is a morally important achievement. On the philosophical map, pro-nationalist normative tastes fit nicely with the communitarian stance in general: most pro-nationalist philosophers are communitarians who choose the nation as the preferred community (in contrast to those of their fellow communitarians who prefer more far-ranging communities, such as those defined by global religious traditions). [ 13 ]

Before proceeding to moral claims, let us briefly sketch the issues and viewpoints connected to territory and territorial rights that are essential for nationalist political programs. [ 14 ] Why is territory important for ethno-national groups, and what are the extent and grounds of territorial rights? Its primary importance resides in sovereignty and all the associated possibilities for internal control and external exclusion. Add to this the Rousseauian view that political attachments are essentially bounded and that love —or, to put it more mildly, republican civil friendship—for one’s group requires exclusion of some “other”, and the importance becomes quite obvious. What about the grounds for the demand for territorial rights? Nationalist and pro-nationalist views mostly rely on the attachment that members of a nation have to national territory and to the formative value of territory for a nation to justify territorial claims (see Miller 2000 and Meisels 2009). This is similar in some respects to the rationale given by proponents of indigenous peoples’ rights (Tully 2004, but see also Hendrix 2008) and in other respects to Kolers’ 2009 ethno-geographical non-nationalist theory, but differs in preferring ethno-national groups as the sole carriers of the right. These attachment views stand in stark contrast to more pragmatic views about territorial rights as means for conflict resolution (e.g., Levy 2000). Another quite popular alternative is the family of individualistic views grounding territorial rights in rights and interests of individuals. [ 15 ] On the extreme end of anti-nationalist views stands the idea of Pogge) that there are no specific territorial problems for political philosophy—the “dissolution approach”, as Kolers calls it.

We now pass to the normative dimension of nationalism. We shall first describe the very heart of the nationalist program, i.e., sketch and classify the typical normative and evaluative nationalist claims. These claims can be seen as answers to the normative subset of our initial questions about (1) pro-national attitudes and (2) actions.

We will see that these claims recommend various courses of action: centrally, those meant to secure and sustain a political organization for the given ethno-cultural national community (thereby making more specific the answers to our normative questions (1e) , (1f) , (2b) , and (2c) ). Further, they enjoin the community’s members to promulgate recognizable ethno-cultural contents as central features of the cultural life within such a state. Finally, we shall discuss various lines of pro-nationalist thought that have been put forward in defense of these claims. To begin, let us return to the claims concerning the furthering of the national state and culture. These are proposed by the nationalist as norms of conduct. The philosophically most important variations concern three aspects of such normative claims:

• The normative nature and strength of the claim: does it promote merely a right (say, to have and maintain a form of political self-government, preferably and typically a state, or have cultural life centered upon a recognizably ethno-national culture), or a moral obligation (to get and maintain one), or a moral, legal, and political obligation? The strongest claim is typical of classical nationalism; its typical norms are both moral and, once the nation-state is in place, legally enforceable obligations for all parties concerned, including for the individual members of the ethno-nation. A weaker but still quite demanding version speaks only of moral obligation (“sacred duty”).
• The strength of the nationalist claim in relation to various external interests and rights: to give a real example, is the use of the domestic language so important that even international conferences should be held in it, at the cost of losing the most interesting participants from abroad? The force of the nationalist claim is here being weighed against the force of other claims, including those of individual or group interests or rights. Variations in comparative strength of nationalist claims take place on a continuum between two extremes. At one rather unpalatable extreme, nation-focused claims take precedence over any other claims, including over human rights. Further towards the center is the classical nationalism that gives nation-centered claims precedence over individual interests and many needs, but not necessarily over general human rights (see, for example, MacIntyre 1994, Oldenquist 1997). On the opposite end, which is mild, humane, and liberal, the central classical nationalist claims are accorded prima facie status only (see Tamir 1993, Gans 2003, and Miller 2013; and for applications to Central Europe Stefan Auer 2004).

Universalizing nationalism is the political program that claims that every ethno-nation should have a state that it should rightfully own and the interests of which it should promote.

Alternatively, a claim may be particularistic, such as the claim “Group X ought to have a state”, where this implies nothing about any other group:

Particularistic nationalism is the political program claiming that some ethno-nation should have its state, without extending the claim to all ethno-nations. It claims thus either by omission (unreflective particularistic nationalism), or by explicitly specifying who is excluded: “Group X ought to have a state, but group Y should not” (invidious nationalism).

The most difficult and indeed chauvinistic sub-case of particularism, i.e., (B), has been called “invidious” since it explicitly denies the privilege of having a state to some peoples. Serious theoretical nationalists usually defend only the universalist variety, whereas the nationalist-in-the-street most often defends the egoistic indeterminate one.

The nationalist picture of morality traditionally has been quite close to the dominant view in the theory of international relations called “realism”. Put starkly, the view is that morality ends at the boundaries of the nation-state; beyond there is nothing but anarchy. [ 16 ] It nicely complements the main classical nationalist claim about the nation-state, i.e., that each ethno-nation or people should have a state of its own, and suggests what happens next: nation-states enter into competition in the name of their constitutive peoples.

3. The Moral Debate

Recall the initial normative question centered around (1) attitudes and (2) actions. Is national partiality justified, and to what extent? What actions are appropriate to bring about sovereignty? In particular, are ethno-national states and institutionally protected (ethno-) national cultures goods independent from the individual will of their members, and how far may one go in protecting them? The philosophical debate for and against nationalism is a debate about the moral validity of its central claims. In particular, the ultimate moral issue is the following: is any form of nationalism morally permissible or justified, and, if not, how bad are particular forms of it? [ 17 ] Why do nationalist claims require a defense? In some situations they seem plausible: for instance, the plight of some stateless national groups—the history of Jews and Armenians, the historical and contemporary misfortunes of Kurds—lends credence to the idea that having their own state would have solved the worst problems. Still, there are good reasons to examine nationalist claims more carefully. The most general reason is that it should first be shown that the political form of the nation-state has some value as such, that a national community has a particular, or even central, moral and political value, and that claims in its favor have normative validity. Once this is established, a further defense is needed. Some classical nationalist claims appear to clash—at least under normal circumstances of contemporary life—with various values that people tend to accept. Some of these values are considered essential to liberal-democratic societies, while others are important specifically for the flourishing of creativity and culture. The main values in the first set are individual autonomy and benevolent impartiality (most prominently towards members of groups culturally different from one’s own). The alleged special duties towards one’s ethno-national culture can and often do interfere with individuals’ right to autonomy.

Liberal nationalists are aware of the difficulties of the classical approach, and soften the classical claims, giving them only a prima facie status. They usually speak of “various accretions that have given nationalism a bad name”, and they are eager to “separate the idea of nationality itself from these excesses” (Miller 1992, 2000). Such thoughtful pro-nationalist writers have participated in an ongoing philosophical dialogue between proponents and opponents of the claim. [ 18 ] In order to help the reader find their through this involved debate, we shall briefly summarize the considerations which are open to the ethno-nationalist to defend their case (compare the useful overview in Lichtenberg 1997). Further lines of thought built upon these considerations can be used to defend very different varieties of nationalism, from radical to very moderate ones.

For brevity, each line of thought will be reduced to a brief argument; the actual debate is more involved than one can represent in a sketch. Some prominent lines of criticism that have been put forward in the debate will be indicated in brackets (see Miscevic 2001). The main arguments in favor of nationalism will be divided into two sets. The first set of arguments defends the claim that national communities have a high value, sometime seen as coming from the interests of their individual member (e.g., by Kymlicka, Miller, and Raz) and sometimes as non-instrumental and independent of the wishes and choices of their individual members, and argues that they should therefore be protected by means of state and official statist policies. The second set is less deeply “comprehensive”, and encompasses arguments from the requirements of justice, independent from substantial assumptions about culture and cultural values.

The first set will be presented in more detail since it has formed the core of the debate. It depicts the community as the source of value or as the transmission device connecting its members to some important values. For the classical nationalist, the arguments from this set are communitarian in a particularly “deep” sense since they are grounded in basic features of the human condition.

The general form of deep communitarian arguments is as follows. First, the communitarian premise: there is some uncontroversial good (e.g., a person’s identity), and some kind of community is essential for acquisition and preservation of it. Then comes the claim that the ethno-cultural nation is the kind of community ideally suited for this task. Then follows the statist conclusion: in order for such a community to preserve its own identity and support the identity of its members, it has to assume (always or at least normally) the political form of a state. The conclusion of this type of argument is that the ethno-national community has the right to an ethno-national state and the citizens of the state have the right and obligation to favor their own ethnic culture in relation to any other.

Although the deeper philosophical assumptions in the arguments stem from the communitarian tradition, weakened forms have also been proposed by more liberal philosophers. The original communitarian lines of thought in favor of nationalism suggest that there is some value in preserving ethno-national cultural traditions, in feelings of belonging to a common nation, and in solidarity between a nation’s members. A liberal nationalist might claim that these are not the central values of political life but are values nevertheless. Moreover, the diametrically opposing views, pure individualism and cosmopolitanism, do seem arid, abstract, and unmotivated by comparison. By cosmopolitanism we refer to moral and political doctrines claiming that

• one’s primary moral obligations are directed to all human beings (regardless of geographical or cultural distance), and
• political arrangements should faithfully reflect this universal moral obligation (in the form of supra-statist arrangements that take precedence over nation-states).

Confronted with opposing forces of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, many philosophers opt for a mixture of liberalism-cosmopolitanism and patriotism-nationalism. In his writings, B. Barber glorifies “a remarkable mixture of cosmopolitanism and parochialism” that in his view characterizes American national identity (Barber 1996: 31). Charles Taylor claims that “we have no choice but to be cosmopolitan and patriots” (Taylor 1996: 121). Hilary Putnam proposes loyalty to what is best in the multiple traditions in which each of us participates, apparently a middle way between a narrow-minded patriotism and an overly abstract cosmopolitanism (Putnam 1996: 114). The compromise has been foreshadowed by Berlin (1979) and Taylor (1989, 1993), [ 19 ] and in the last two decades it has occupied center stage in the debate and even provoked re-readings of historical nationalism in its light. [ 20 ] Most liberal nationalist authors accept various weakened versions of the arguments we list below, taking them to support moderate or ultra-moderate nationalist claims.

Here are then the main weakenings of classical ethno-nationalism that liberal, limited-liberal, and cosmopolitan nationalists propose. First, ethno-national claims have only prima facie strength and cannot trump individual rights. Second, legitimate ethno-national claims do not in themselves automatically amount to the right to a state, but rather to the right to a certain level of cultural autonomy. The main models of autonomy are either territorial or non-territorial: the first involves territorial devolution; the second, cultural autonomy granted to individuals regardless of their domicile within the state. [ 21 ] Third, ethno-nationalism is subordinate to civic patriotism, which has little or nothing to do with ethnic criteria. Fourth, ethno-national mythologies and similar “important falsehoods” are to be tolerated only if benign and inoffensive, in which case they are morally permissible despite their falsity. Finally, any legitimacy that ethno-national claims may have is to be derived from choices the concerned individuals are free to make.

Consider now the particular pro-nationalist arguments from the first set. The first argument depends on assumptions that also appear in the subsequent ones, but it further ascribes to the community an intrinsic value. The later arguments point more towards an instrumental value of nation, derived from the value of individual flourishing, moral understanding, firm identity and the like.

• The Argument From Intrinsic Value . Each ethno-national community is valuable in and of itself since it is only within the natural encompassing framework of various cultural traditions that important meanings and values are produced and transmitted. The members of such communities share a special cultural proximity to each other. By speaking the same language and sharing customs and traditions, the members of these communities are typically closer to one another in various ways than they are to the outsiders.
• The Argument from Flourishing . The ethno-national community is essential for each of its members to flourish. In particular, it is only within such a community that an individual can acquire concepts and values crucial for understanding the community’s cultural life in general and the individual’s own life in particular. There has been much debate on the pro-nationalist side about whether divergence of values is essential for separateness of national groups.

The Canadian liberal nationalists Seymour (1999), Taylor, and Kymlicka pointed out that “divergences of value between different regions of Canada” that aspire to separate nationhood are “minimal”. Taylor (1993: 155) concluded that it is not separateness of value that matters.

• The Argument from Identity . Communitarian philosophers emphasize nurture over nature as the principal force determining our identity as people—we come to be who we are because of the social settings and contexts in which we mature. This claim certainly has some plausibility. The very identity of each person depends upon his/her participation in communal life (see MacIntyre 1994, Nielsen, 1998, and Lagerspetz 2000). Given that an individual’s morality depends upon their having a mature and stable personal identity, the communal conditions that foster the development of personal identity must be preserved and encouraged. Therefore, communal life should be organized around particular national cultures.
• The Argument from Moral Understanding . A particularly important variety of value is moral value. Some values are universal, e.g., freedom and equality, but these are too abstract and “thin”. The rich, “thick” moral values are discernible only within particular traditions; as Charles Taylor puts it, “the language we have come to accept articulates the issues of the good for us” (1989: 35). The nation offers a natural framework for moral traditions, and thereby for moral understanding; it is the primary school of morals.

The ‘physiognomies’ of cultures are unique: each presents a wonderful exfoliation of human potentialities in its own time and place and environment. We are forbidden to make judgments of comparative value, for that is measuring the incommensurable. (1976: 206)

Assuming that the (ethno-)nation is the natural unit of culture, the preservation of cultural diversity amounts to institutionally protecting the purity of (ethno-)national culture. The plurality of cultural styles can be preserved and enhanced by tying them to ethno-national “forms of life”.

David Miller has developed an interesting and sophisticated liberal pro-national stance over the course of decades from his work in 1990 to the most recent work in 2013. He accepts multicultural diversity within a society but stresses an overarching national identity, taking as his prime example British national identity, which encompasses the English, Scottish, and other ethnic identities. He demands an “inclusive identity, accessible to members of all cultural groups” (2013: 91). miller claims such identity is necessary for basic social solidarity, and it goes far beyond simple constitutional patriotism. A skeptic could note the following. The problem with multicultural society is that national identity has historically been a matter of ethno-national ties and has required sameness in the weighted majority of cultural traits (common language, common “history-as-remembered”, customs, religion and so on). However, multi-cultural states typically bring together groups with very different histories, languages, religions, and even quite contrasting appearances. Now, how is the overarching “national identity” to be achieved starting from the very thin identity of common belonging to a state? One seems to have a dilemma. Grounding social solidarity in national identity requires the latter to be rather thin and seems likely to end up as full-on, unitary cultural identity. Thick constitutional patriotism may be one interesting possible attitude that can ground such solidarity while preserving the original cultural diversity.

The arguments in the second set concern political justice and do not rely on metaphysical claims about identity, flourishing, and cultural values. They appeal to (actual or alleged) circumstances that would make nationalist policies reasonable (or permissible or even mandatory), such as (a) the fact that a large part of the world is organized into nation-states (so that each new group aspiring to create a nation-state just follows an established pattern), or (b) the circumstances of group self-defense or of redressing past injustice that might justify nationalist policies (to take a special case). Some of the arguments also present nationhood as conducive to important political goods, such as equality.

• The Argument from the Right to Collective Self-determination . A group of people of a sufficient size has a prima facie right to govern itself and decide its future membership, if the members of the group so wish. It is fundamentally the democratic will of the members themselves that grounds the right to an ethno-national state and to ethno-centric cultural institutions and practices. This argument presents the justification of (ethno-)national claims as deriving from the will of the members of the nation. It is therefore highly suitable for liberal nationalism but not appealing to a deep communitarian who sees the demands of the nation as independent from, and prior to, the choices of particular individuals. [ 22 ]
• The Argument from the Right to Self-defense and to Redress Past Injustices . Oppression and injustice give the victimized group a just cause and the right to secede. If a minority group is oppressed by the majority to the extent that almost every minority member is worse off than most members of the majority simply in virtue of belonging to the minority, then nationalist claims on behalf of the minority are morally plausible and potentially compelling. The argument establishes a typical remedial right, acceptable from a liberal standpoint (see the discussion in Kukathas and Poole 2000, also Buchanan 1991; for past injustices see Waldron 1992).
• The Argument from Equality . Members of a minority group are often disadvantaged in relation to the dominant culture because they have to rely on those with the same language and culture to conduct the affairs of daily life. Therefore, liberal neutrality itself requires that the majority provide certain basic cultural goods, i.e., granting differential rights (see Kymlicka 1995b, 2001, and 2003b). Institutional protections and the right to the minority group’s own institutional structure are remedies that restore equality and turn the resulting nation-state into a more moderate multicultural one.
• The Argument from Success . The nationstate has in the past succeeded in promoting equality and democracy. Ethno-national solidarity is a powerful motive for a more egalitarian distribution of goods (Miller 1995; Canovan 1996, 2000). The nation-state also seems to be essential to safeguard the moral life of communities in the future, since it is the only form of political institution capable of protecting communities from the threats of globalization and assimilationism (for a detailed critical discussion of this argument see Mason 1999).

Andreas Wimmer (2018) presents an interesting discussion of the historical success of nation-state (discussed in Knott, Tolz, Green, & Wimmer 2019).

These political arguments can be combined with deep communitarian ones. However, taken in isolation, their perspectives offer a “liberal culturalism” that is more suitable for ethno-culturally plural societies. More remote from classical nationalism than the liberal one of Tamir and Nielsen, it eschews any communitarian philosophical underpinning. [ 23 ] The idea of moderate nation-building points to an open multi-culturalism in which every group receives its share of remedial rights but, instead of walling itself off from others, participates in a common, overlapping civic culture in open communication with other sub-communities. Given the variety of pluralistic societies and intensity of trans-national interactions, such openness seems to many to be the only guarantee of stable social and political life (see the debate in Shapiro and Kymlicka 1997).

In general, the liberal nationalist stance is mild and civil, and there is much to be said in favor of it. It tries to reconcile our intuitions in favor of some sort of political protection of cultural communities with a liberal political morality. Of course, this raises issues of compatibility between liberal universal principles and the particular attachments to one’s ethno-cultural nation. Very liberal nationalists such as Tamir divorce ethno-cultural nationhood from statehood. Also, the kind of love for country they suggest is tempered by all kinds of universalist considerations, which in the last instance trump national interest (Tamir 1993: 115; 2019: passim, see also Moore 2001 and Gans 2003). There is an ongoing debate among philosophical nationalists about how much weakening and compromising is still compatible with a stance’s being nationalist at all. [ 24 ] There is also a streak of cosmopolitan interest present in the work of some liberal nationalists (Nielsen 1998–99). [ 25 ]

In the last two decades, the issues of nationalism have been increasingly integrated into the debate about the international order (see the entries on globalization and cosmopolitanism ). The main conceptual link is the claim that nation-states are natural, stable, and suitable units of the international order. A related debate concerns the role of minorities in the processes of globalization (see Kaldor 2004). Moreover, the two approaches might ultimately converge: a multiculturalist liberal nationalism and a moderate, difference-respecting cosmopolitanism have a lot in common. [ 26 ]

“Populism” is an umbrella term, covering both right-wing and left-wing varieties. This section will pay attention to right-wing populist movements, very close to their traditional nationalist predecessors. This corresponds to the situation in the biggest part of Europe, and in the US, where nationalist topics are being put forward by the right-wing populist. [ 27 ]

However, it has become quite clear that nationalism is only one of the political “isms” attracting the right-wing populists. The migration crisis has brought to the forefront populist self-identification with linguistic-cultural communities (“we, French speaking people” for the former, “we Christians” for the later) that goes beyond nationalism.

Jan-Werner Müller (2016) and Cas Mudde (2007) note that the form common to all sorts of populism is quite simple and describe it as “thin”. Mudde explains: “Populism is understood as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the People” (2007: 23). Populism, so defined, has two opposites: elitism and pluralism. First, there is the elite vs. people (“underdog”) contrast. Second, it is possible to distinguish two ways of characterizing “the people”: either in terms of social status (class, income-level, etc.) or in terms of ethnic and/or cultural belonging (see also de Cleen 2017).

The second, horizontal dimension distinguishes the predominantly left-wing from the predominantly right-wing populisms and leaves a place for a centrist populist option. Take classical strong ethnic nationalism. The relation between right-wing populism and such a nationalism is very tight. This has led some theoreticians (Taguieff 2015) to present “nationalist populism” as the only kind of populism. The term captures exactly the synthesis of populism and the strong ethnic nationalism or nativism. From populism, it takes the general schema of anti-elitism: the leader is addressing directly the people and is allegedly following the people’s interest. From nationalism, it takes the characterization of the people: it is the ethnic community, in most cases the state-owing ethnic community, or the ethno-nation. In his work, Mudde documents the claim that purely right-wing populists claim to represent the true people who form the true nation and whose purity is being muddied by new entrants. In the United States, one can talk about populist and reactionary movements, like the Tea Party, that have emerged through the recent experience of immigration, terrorist attacks, and growing economic polarization. We have to set aside here, for reasons of space, the main populist alternative (or quasi-alternative) to national populism. In some countries, like Germany, some populist groups-parties (e.g., German AfD party (Alternative for Germany)), appeal to properties much wider in their reach than ethno-national belonging, typically to religious affiliations. Others combine this appeal with the ethno-national one. This yields what Riva Kastoryano (2006) calls “transnational nationalism”.

Interestingly, liberal nationalism is not very attractive to the populists. On the theoretical side one can note that Tamir (2019) sees her liberal nationalism as a good recipe against the threat of demagogues like Trump and Boris Johnson (she avoids the use of the label “populist”, e.g., 2019: 31).

The rise of populism is changing the political playfield one must work with. The tolerant (liberal nationalist or anti-nationalist) views are confronting new problems in the populist age marked by migration crisis, etc. The dangers traditionally associated with military presence are gone; the national populists have to invent and construct a presumed danger that comes into the country together with foreign families, including those with children. In short, if these conjectures hold, the politicians and theoreticians are faced with a change. The traditional issue of the contrast between patriotism/nationalism and cosmopolitanism has changed its profile: the current drastic contrast is between the populist aversion to the foreigners-migrants and a more generous attitude of acceptance and Samaritan help. Finally, the populist understanding of “our people” (“we-community”) encompasses not only nationalist options but also goes way beyond it. The important element is the promiscuous character of the populist choices. It is probable that the future scholarship on nationalism will mainly focus on this new and challenging playfield, with an aim to address the new contrast and locate kinds of nationalism in relation to it. [ 28 ]

The migration crisis has made the nation-state in global context the central political topic concerning nationality. Before moving on to current events, the state of art before the crisis should be summarized. First, consider the debates on territory and nation and issues of global justice.

Liberal nationalists try to preserve the traditional nationalist link between ethnic “ownership” of the state and sovereignty and territorial control, but in a much more flexible and sophisticated setting. Tamar Meisels thus argues in favor of “taking existing national settlements into account as a central factor in demarcating territorial boundaries” since this line “has both liberal foundations” (i.e., in the work of John Locke) and liberal-national appeal (2009: 159) grounded in its affinity with the liberal doctrine of national self-determination. She combines it with Chaim Gans’ (2003: Ch. 4) interpretation of “historical right” claims as “the right to formative territories”. She thus combines “historical arguments, understood as claims to formative territories”, with her argument from settlement and insists on their interplay and mutual reinforcement, presenting them as being “most closely related to, and based on, liberal nationalist assumptions and underlying ideas” (Meisels 2009: 160). She nevertheless stresses that more than one ethnic group can have formative ties to a given territory, and that there might be competing claims based on settlement. [ 29 ] But, given the ethno-national conflicts of the twentieth century, one can safely assume that culturally plural states divided into isolated and closed sub-communities glued together merely by arrangements of modus vivendi are inherently unstable. Stability might therefore require that the pluralist society envisioned by liberal culturalists promote quite intense intra-state interaction between cultural groups in order to forestall mistrust, reduce prejudice, and create a solid basis for cohabitation.

But where should one stop? The question arises since there are many geographically open, interacting territories of various sizes. Consider first the geographical openness of big continental planes, then add the modern ease of interaction (“No island is an island any more”, one could say), and, finally and dramatically, the substantial ecological interconnectedness of land and climate. Here, the tough nationalistic line is no longer proposed seriously in ethical debates, so the furthest pro-national extreme is in fact a relatively moderate stance, exemplified by Miller in the works listed. Here is a typical proposal of his concerning global justice based on nation-states: it might become a matter of national pride to have set aside a certain percentage of GDP for developmental goals—perhaps for projects in one particular country or group of countries (2013: 182).

This brings us to the topic of migrations, and the heated debate on the present scene. [ 30 ] In Europe immigration is probably the main topic of the present day populist uproar, and in the United States it is one of the main topics. So, immigration plus the nationalist-populist reactions to it are in the current decade the main testing ground for nationalist and cosmopolitan views.

Let’s look at the pro-national side in the debate. Liberal nationalists, in particular Miller, have put forward some thoughtful pro-nationalist proposal concerning immigration. Miller’s proposal allows refugees to seek asylum temporarily until the situation in their country of origin improves; it also limits economic migration. Miller argues against the defensibility of a global standard for equality, opportunity, welfare, etc., because measures of just equality are context-bound. People do have the right to a minimum standard of living, but the right to migrate only activates as a last resort after all other measures within a candidate-migrant’s country of origin have been tried. However, he also (particularly in his book on “Strangers in our midst”, 2016), claims that national responsibility to accept immigrant refugees is balanced by considerations of the interest of would-be immigrants and the interests that national communities have in maintaining control over their own composition and character.

If we agree with the liberal nationalists on the positive side, we can ask about the dynamics of the help required for the immigrants. Distinguish at least three stages, first, the immediate emergency (starvation, freezing, urgent medical problems) and catering to it, second, settlement and learning (on the host and the immigrant newcomer side), and third, the stage of (some kind of) citizenship, of relatively stable life in the host country.

In the first phase, the immediate help comes first, both normatively and causally: just accept the would-be refugees (indeed, the would-be refugees should be helped in leaving their countries and travelling to the host country). In longer term, staying should involve opportunity for work and training.

But there is more. The Samaritan obligation can and should function as a preparation for wider global activity. [ 31 ] So, we have two theoretical steps, first, accepting Samaritanism and second, agreeing with deeper trans-national measure of blocking distant causes, like poverty and wars in the Third world. Let us call this “Samaritan-to-deeper-measures model”. The model is geared to the dramatically changed playground in which the nationalism issues are played out in the context of populism and refugee crisis, raising issues that were not around two decades ago.

In presenting the claims that the pro-nationalists defend, we have proceeded from the more radical towards more liberal nationalist alternatives. In examining the arguments for these claims, we have presented metaphysically demanding communitarian arguments resting upon deep communitarian assumptions about culture, such as the premise that the ethno-cultural nation is the most important community for all individuals. This is an interesting and respectable claim, but its plausibility has not been established. The moral debate about nationalism has resulted in various weakenings of culture-based arguments, typically proposed by liberal nationalists, which render the arguments less ambitious but much more plausible. Having abandoned the old nationalist ideal of a state owned by a single dominant ethno-cultural group, liberal nationalists have become receptive to the idea that identification with a plurality of cultures and communities is important for a person’s social identity. They have equally become sensitive to trans-national issues and more willing to embrace a partly cosmopolitan perspective. Liberal nationalism has also brought to the fore more modest, less philosophically or metaphysically charged arguments grounded in concerns about justice. These stress the practical importance of ethno-cultural membership, ethno-cultural groups’ rights to have injustices redressed, democratic rights of political association, and the role that ethno-cultural ties and associations can play in promoting just social arrangements.

The events in the current decade, the refugee crisis and the rise of right-wing populism, have dramatically changed the relevant practical and theoretical playground. The traditional nationalism is still relevant, but populist nationalism attracts much more attention: new theories are being produced and debated, coming to occupy the center stage. On the other hand, migration crisis has replaced the typical cosmopolitan issue of solidarity-with-distant-strangers with burning issues of helping refugees present at our doors. Of course, the causes of the crisis are still the same ones that cosmopolitans have been worrying about much earlier: wars and dramatically unequal global distribution of goods, and of threats, like illnesses and climate disasters. The task of the theory is now to connect these deeper issues with the new problems occupying the center-stage of the new playground; it is a challenge now formulated in somewhat different vocabulary and within different political conceptual frameworks than before.

This is a short list of books on nationalism that are readable and useful introductions to the literature. First, two contemporary classics of social science with opposing views are:

• Gellner, Ernest, 1983, Nations and Nationalism , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Smith, Anthony D., 1991, National Identity , Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Three presentations of liberal nationalism, two of them by the same author, Yael Tamir, offer the best introduction to the approach:

• Miller, David, 1995, On Nationality , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198293569.001.0001
• Tamir, Yael, 1993, Liberal Nationalism , Press, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2019, Why Nationalism , Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Two short and readable introductions are:

• Özkirimli, Umut, 2010, Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction , second edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan. First edition is 2000; third edition is 2017.
• Spencer, Philip and Howard Wollman, 2002, Nationalism, A Critical Introduction , London: Sage.

The two best anthologies of high-quality philosophical papers on the morality of nationalism are:

• McKim, Robert and Jeff McMahan (eds), 1997, The Morality of Nationalism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Couture, Jocelyne, Kai Nielsen, and Michel Seymour (eds.), 1998, Rethinking Nationalism , Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Supplement Volume 22, Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.

The debate continues in:

• Miscevic, Nenad (ed), 2000, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: Philosophical Perspectives , La Salle and Chicago: Open Court.
• Dieckoff, Alain (ed.), 2004, The Politics of Belonging: Nationalism, Liberalism, and Pluralism , Lanham: Lexington.
• Primoratz, Igor and Aleksandar Pavković (eds), 2007, Patriotism, Philosophical and Political Perspectives , London: Ashgate.
• Breen, Keith and Shane O’Neill (eds.), 2010, After the Nation? Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism , London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230293175

A good brief sociological introduction to nationalism in general is:

• Grosby, Steven, 2005, Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

and to the gender-inspired criticism of nationalism is:

• Yuval-Davis, Nira, 1997, Gender & Nation , London: Sage Publications.
• Heuer, Jennifer, 2008, “Gender and Nationalism”, in Herb and Kaplan 2008: vol. 1, 43–58.
• Hogan, Jackie, 2009, Gender, Race and National Identity: Nations of Flesh and Blood , London: Routledge.

The best general introduction to the communitarian-individualist debate is still:

• Avineri, Shlomo and Avner de-Shalit (eds.), 1992, Communitarianism and Individualism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

For a non-nationalist defense of culturalist claims see:

• Kymlicka, Will (ed.), 1995a, The Rights of Minority Cultures , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

A very readable philosophical defense of very moderate liberal nationalism is:

• Gans, Chaim, 2003, The Limits of Nationalism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511490231

And for application to Central Europe see:

• Auer, Stefan, 2004, Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe , London: Routledge.

A polemical, witty and thoughtful critique is offered in:

• Barry, Brian, 2001, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

And a more recent one in

• Kelly, Paul, 2015, “Liberalism and Nationalism”, in The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism , Steven Wall (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 329–352. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139942478.018

Interesting critical analyses of group solidarity in general and nationalism in particular, written in the traditions of rational choice theory and motivation analysis, are:

• Hardin, Russell, 1985, One for All, The Logic of Group Conflict , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Yack, Bernard, 2012, Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

There is a wide offering of interesting sociological and political science work on nationalism, which is beginning to be summarized in:

• Motyl, Alexander (ed.), 2001, Encyclopedia of Nationalism , Volumes I and II, New York: Academic Press.

A fine encyclopedic overview is:

• Herb, Guntram H. and David H. Kaplan, 2008, Nations and Nationalism: a Global Historical Overview , four volumes, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio.

A detailed sociological study of life under nationalist rule is:

• Billig, Michael, 1995, Banal Nationalism , London: Sage Publications.

The most readable short anthology of brief papers for and against cosmopolitanism (and nationalism) by leading authors in the field is:

• Cohen, Joshua (ed.), 1996, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism , Martha Nussbaum and respondents, Boston, MA: Beacon Press
• Anderson, Benedict, 1983 [2006], Imagined Communities , London: Verso; revised edition, 2006.
• Aron, Raymond, 1962, Paix et guerre entre les nations , Paris: Calmann-Levy. Translated as Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations , Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (trans), Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.
• Balibar, Etienne and Immanuel Wallerstein, 1988 [1991], Race, nation, classe: les identités ambiguës , Paris: Editiones La Découverte; translated as Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities , Chris Turner (trans.), London-New York: Verso.
• Barber, Benjamin R., 1996, “Constitutional Faith”, in J. Cohen (ed.) 1996: 30–37.
• –––, 1996, Jihad Vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World , New York: Ballantine Books.
• Barry, Brian, 1999, “Statism and Nationalism: a Cosmopolitan Critique”, in Shapiro and Brilmayer 1999: 12–66.
• –––, 2001, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
• Bauböck, Reiner, 2004, “Territorial or Cultural Autonomy for National Minorities?”, in Dieckoff 2004: 221–258.
• Bechhofer, Frank and David McCrone (eds.), 2009, National Identity, Nationalism and Constitutional Change , London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230234147
• Bell, Duncan (ed.), 2008, Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Berlin, Isaiah, 1976, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas , London: The Hogarth Press.
• –––, 1979, “Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power”, in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas , London: Hogarth Press, 333–355.
• Betts, Alexander and Paul Collier, 2017, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System , London: Penguin.
• –––, 2017, “Banal Nationalism and the Imagining of Politics”, in Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging after Banal Nationalism , Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich (eds.), London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 307–321. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-57098-7_15
• Blake, Michael, 2013, Justice and Foreign Policy , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199552009.001.0001
• Breuilly, John, 2001, “The State”, in Motyl (ed.) 2001: Volume 1.
• –––, 2011, “On the Principle of Nationality”, in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought , Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 77–109. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521430562.005
• Breuilly, John, John Hutchinson, and Eric Kaufmann (eds), 2019, special issue on populism and nationalism in Nations and Nationalism , 25(1): 1–400.
• Brubaker, Rogers, 2004, “In the Name of the Nation: Reflections on Nationalism and Patriotism1”, Citizenship Studies , 8(2): 115–127. doi:10.1080/1362102042000214705
• –––, 2013, “Language, Religion and the Politics of Difference”, Nations and Nationalism , 19(1): 1–20. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2012.00562.x
• –––, 2015, Grounds for Difference , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Buchanan, Allen, 1991, Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec , Boulder: Westview Press.
• –––, 2004, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198295359.001.0001
• Buchanan, Allen and Margaret Moore (eds.), 2003, States, Nations and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511613937
• Butt, Daniel, Sarah Jane Fine, & Zofia Stemplowska (eds), 2018, Political Philosophy, Here and Now: Essays in Honour of David Miller , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Calhoun, Craig, 2007, Nations Matter. Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream , London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203960899
• Canovan, Margaret, 1996, Nationhood and Political Theory , Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• –––, 2000, “Patriotism Is Not Enough”, British Journal of Political Science , 30(3): 413–432. doi:10.1017/S000712340000017X
• –––, 2001, “Sleeping Dogs, Prowling Cats and Soaring Doves: Three Paradoxes in the Political Theory of Nationhood”, Political Studies , 49(2): 203–215. doi:10.1111/1467-9248.00309
• Carens, Joseph H., 2013, The Ethics of Immigration , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Casertano, Stefano, 2013, Our Land, Our Oil! Natural Resources, Local Nationalism, and Violent Secession , Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. doi:10.1007/978-3-531-19443-1
• Chatterjee, Deen K. and B. Smith (eds.), 2003, Moral Distance , special issue of The Monist , 86(3): 327–515.
• Christiano, Thomas, 2008, “Immigration, Community and Cosmopolitanism”, in San Diego Law Review , 933(Nov–Dec): 938–962.
• –––, 2012, “The Legitimacy of International Institutions”, in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law , Andrei Marmor (ed.), London: Routledge, pp. 380–394.
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• Cohen, Joshua (ed.), 1996, For Love of Country? (Martha C. Nussbaum with respondents), Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Colm Hogan, Patrick, 2009, Understanding Nationalism: On Narrative, Cognitive Science and Identity , Ohio: Ohio State University Press.
• Connor, Walker, 1994, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Conversi, Daniele, 2002, Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World: Walker Connor and the Study of Nationalism , London: Routledge.
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• Walker, R.B.J., 2001, “Postmodernism”, in Motyl (ed.) 2001: Volume 1, 611–630.
• Walzer, Michael, 1983, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality , New York: Basic Boooks.
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• –––, 2004, Arguing about War , New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
• Weber, Max, 1924, “Diskussionsrede zum Vortrag von P. Barth ‘Die Nationalitit in ihrer soziologischer (1912) Bedeutung’ auf dem zweiten Deutschen Soziologentag in Berlin 1912”, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik , Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), S. pp. 484–486.
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• Wimmer, Andreas, 2013, Waves of War: Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139198318
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• Yuval-Davis, Nira, 1997, Gender and Nation , New York: Sage Publications.
• Žižek, Slavoj, 2015, “In the Wake of Paris Attacks the Left Must Embrace Its Radical Western Roots”, In These Times , 16 November 2015, available online .
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Nussbaum, Martha C. 2002, “ Beyond the Social Contract: Toward Global Justice ”, Tanner Lecture, Australian National University.
• Waldron, Jeremy, 2005, “ Proximity as the Basis of Political Community .”
• Nationalism – A Bibliography , compiled by Peter Rasmussen. A good collection of links and bibliographies, but no longer maintained.
• The Warwick Debates , debate between Ernest Gellner and Anthony D. Smith at the London School of Economics, 1995.
• ARENA: Centre for European Studies ; ARENA is a research centre at the University of Oslo studying the dynamics of the evolving European systems of governance. This site contains a good selection of papers on ethics of international relations.
• Global Policy Forum , has papers on the future of nation-states.
• Academy of European Law , at the European University Institute.
• Territory and Justice network: repository of pre-publication papers .

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• Published: 17 November 2022

Revisiting key debates in the study of nationalism

• Abdul Maajid Dar 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  9 , Article number:  411 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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The purpose of this article is to lay out the debates and arguments around three key broader issues that dominate nationalism studies: (a) the meaning of a nation and nationalism and the relationship between political and cultural nationalism; (b) the origins and character of nations and nationalism; and (c) the civic-ethnic dichotomy and the relationship between nationalism and liberalism. It does not aim to provide definitive answers to the complex problems associated with nations and nationalism but rather to provide an overview of these debates by examining the existing literature on nations and nationalism. The final section discusses the position of new approaches to nations and nationalism and how they have problematised the key assumptions of the mainstream understanding of nationalism. The article, in light of an overview of the literature, draws four important conclusions. First, the academic journey of nationalism has reached a stage where the current consensus is that nations are socially constructed and historically contingent phenomena, and the current focus of the scholarship is on looking at the intersection between the cultural and political aspects of nationalism. Second, nations and nationalism possess a multifaceted character with particularity, subjectivity, and relativity as their defining features, representing that a single, universal explanation of nationalism is neither feasible nor morally desirable. Third, to understand the multiplicity and diversity of nations and nationalism and the ways in which elements of this multidimensionality intersect, it is necessary to treat them as open-ended, unstable, dispersed, protean, particular, and contingent phenomena. Finally, deep contestation constitutes a source of power and strength for nations and nationalism.

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The phenomena of nation and nationalism are the forces that shape the modern world, among others. They are global phenomena occurring worldwide, despite the scepticism articulated by many scholars about their continuing survival and relevance. They, as modern concepts, first originated in Europe in the late eighteenth century. Within the study of nationalism, though scholars are deeply divided on the origins of nations and nationalism, there is a general consensus that they bloomed and acquired their modern political meanings and significance in the context of the French Revolution of 1789. The French Revolution defined the nation as a democratic, sovereign, secular republic of equal citizens, a definition that dominated nationalist studies and movements throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. By asserting the principles of democracy, constitutionalism, equality, national self-determination, the sovereignty of the people, and republicanism as the basis for the new political order in Europe, the revolution significantly contributed to the spread of the phenomena of nation and nationalism from France to other countries in Europe, particularly Italy, Germany, Russia, and Spain. The Napoleonic wars, the 1848 revolutions, and post-1848 national unification-oriented movements made the nation and nationalism fashionable throughout Europe and North America in the 19th century. As milestones in the development of nation and nationalism in the 20th century, anticolonial movements widely extended them to three non-western continents: Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As a result, nation and nationalism have acquired a global presence, taking various forms in different socio-economic and political contexts.

While there is a general consensus that nations and nationalism are happening everywhere, scholarship on nationalism is deeply engrossed in intense debates about the meaning of nation and nationalism, their origins, and their nature and scope. This article provides a theoretical review of these debates and is based on an examination of existing literature on nations and nationalism. Accordingly, the article is divided into four broad sections. The first section examines the debates and disputes about the meaning of a nation and nationalism and the relationship between political and cultural nationalism. The second section discusses the competing arguments of primordialism, modernism, and ethnosymbolism about the origins of nations and nationalism. The following section analyses the intense debates about the civic-ethnic dichotomy and the relationship between nationalism and liberalism. The fourth section discusses the position of new approaches to nations and nationalism and the ways they have problematised the key assumptions of the mainstream understanding of nationalism. The main findings are summarised in the conclusion.

Defining nation and nationalism

The nation and nationalism, like other concepts in the social sciences, are deeply contested. Scholars across the social sciences—history, sociology, political science, anthropology, philosophy, and psychology—have provided a number of competing and diverse definitions of nation and nationalism, connoting different meanings in different contexts. Much of the ambiguity stems from scholars’ approach to defining a nation and nationalism exclusively on the basis of objective or subjective factors or viewing them as purely political or cultural phenomena. Objective–subjective debate, revolving around what makes a nation a nation and how membership in a nation is determined, is conceptually significant since all other debates, such as debates about cultural and political nationalism, origins of nations and nationalism, and civic–ethnic dichotomy, cannot be understood without reference to and independent of the objective and subjective markers that occupy a central place in these debates. First, cultural nations are associated with objective definitions, and cultural nationalism is conceptualised on the basis of objective elements, while political nations are related to subjective definitions, and political nationalism is defined on the basis of subjective factors. Second, the theories about the origins of nations and nationalism, such as primordialism and ethno-symbolism, place greater emphasis on the importance of objective factors in constituting a nation and see nationalism as a cultural phenomenon, while the special focus of modernism is on the subjective sense of belonging to a nation and considers nationalism as a political phenomenon. Third, the distinction between civic or political and ethnic or cultural nationalism is deeply embedded in subjective and objective factors respectively and broader debates about the origins of nations and nationalism and the relationship between political and cultural nationalism. Finally, objective and subjective elements also constitute an important part of analysis for new feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist approaches to nationalism, but in a reflexive and non-essentialist sense, when they insist that objective elements and subjective sense of belonging to a nation are discursively constructed through discourses and argue for studying a nation and nationalism as contextual, contingent and particular categories. Thus, conceptually, all the debates about nations and nationalism are interrelated and mutually constitutive, and no one can be understood in isolation, as we will see in this paper.

Objective and subjective definitions

Objective definitions.

The objective elements in defining nations include a common language, religion, history, customs, territory, and ethnicity. The proponents of objective definitions argue for these objective markers as the fixed criteria for determining membership in a nation. While defining a nation on the basis of objective elements, Joseph Stalin stated that “a nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture” (as cited in Franklin, 1973 , p. 57). For Yoram Hazony ( 2018 ), nation refers to “a number of tribes with a common language or religion and a past history of acting as a body for the common defense and other large-scale enterprises” (p. 19). This means that a nation comes into existence only when a particular group of people has bonds of cohesion and mutual loyalty. The feeling of mutual loyalty is produced by a common language or religion and the “history of collaboration against common enemies” (p. 126). Objective definitions’ focus on fixed objective criteria for the constitution of a nation is ridden with problems and is strongly challenged both on pragmatic and conceptual grounds. The main problem, among others, with objective definitions, is that no one is certain about which attributes a group of people must have to become a nation and what number of them. This problem is highlighted by Ernest Renan (1882/ 1996 ) by arguing: “how is it that Switzerland, which has three languages, two religions, and three or four races, is a nation, when Tuscany, which is so homogenous, is not one?” (p. 46). For Renan, it is the will of the group of people, not necessarily the objective factors, on the basis of which they form a nation. As he puts it: “the United States and England, Latin America and Spain speak the same language yet do not form a single nation. Conversely, Switzerland, so well made, since she was made with the consent of her different parts, numbers three or four languages” (p. 50). Following Renan, Bernard Yack ( 2012 ) argues: “there are a sufficient number of examples of multilingual nations—as well as nations divided by a common language—to bring into doubt the association of nations with linguistic communities” (p. 74). Similarly, Michael Hechter ( 2000 ) and Florian Bieber ( 2020 ) point out that none of the objective elements necessarily generates national solidarity. What Renan points out and the majority of scholars embrace is that no nation satisfies all the objective criteria and, therefore, an attempt to define nations absolutely on the basis of objective markers lacks reliability and is “fundamentally misguided” (Ozkirimli, 2005 , p. 17).

Subjective definitions

The subjective factors employed in the definition of nations consist of self-consciousness, attitudes, sentiments, solidarity, fidelity, and willpower. According to Renan (1882/ 1996 ), “a nation is… a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future” (p. 53). For Max Weber ( 1994 ), “a nation is a community of sentiment which could adequately manifest itself in a state of its own” (p. 25). Seton-Watson ( 1977 ) holds that “a nation exists when a significant number of people in a community consider themselves to form a nation, or behave as if they formed one” (p. 5). The subjective definitions emphasise that a nation comes into existence only when the members of a group become conscious of their identity and recognise each other as fellow citizens. As David Miller ( 1995 ) writes: “national communities are constituted by belief: nations exist when their members recognise one another as compatriots, and believe that they share characteristics of the relevant kind” (p. 22). Bieber ( 2020 ), too, argues that the choice of individuals to join or identify themselves with a nation and the acceptance of the same by the larger community are essential prerequisites for the constitution of a nation. For proponents of subjective definitions, objective elements are neither adequate nor absolute categories for the constitution of a nation, though they may play a role in generating the feeling of commonality. As Renan (1882/ 1996 ) states: “language invites people to unite, but it does not force them to do so…. Religion cannot supply an adequate basis for the constitution of a modern nationality either” (p. 50). Bieber ( 2020 ) reinforces this point of view and argues that objective markers “facilitate the subjective sense of belonging to a nation, but they are not necessary” (p. 8).

Although subjective definitions are widely embraced, they are neither final nor free from problems. They remain silent on what motivates the feeling of commonality and nationality (Ozkirimli, 2005 ). The second problem is what distinguishes a nation from other groupings possessing subjective elements too. This problem is highlighted by Craig Calhoun ( 1997 ) by arguing that “social solidarity and collective identity can exist in many sorts of groupings, from families to employees of business corporations to imperial armies. They are minimal conditions for calling a population a nation, but far from a definition” (p. 4). Thirdly, by regarding the creation and dissolution of nations as a product of individual or collective consciousness or choice, subjective criteria, argues Eric Hobsbawm ( 1992 ), “can lead the incautions into extremes of voluntarism” (p. 8).

To avoid the problems associated with objective and subjective definitions, some scholars define a nation as a combination of objective and subjective factors (Kellas, 1998 ; Tamir, 1993 , 2019 ; Yack, 2012 ). According to Kellas ( 1998 ), “nations have ‘objective’ characteristics which may include a territory, a language, or common descent (though not all of these are always present), and ‘subjective’ characteristics, essentially a people’s awareness of its nationality and affection for it” (p. 3). For Yael Tamir ( 1993 ), “a group is defined as a nation if it exhibits both a sufficient number of shared, objective characteristics- such as language, history, or territory- and self-awareness of its distinctiveness” (p. 66). For these scholars, only those who share certain objective characteristics recognise each other as compatriots; they feel commonality and nationality. The scholars’ approach of defining a nation as a combination of objective and subjective factors fails to establish and fix a balance between the two and therefore causes the same problems associated with objective or subjective definitions.

Political and cultural definitions

Political definitions.

Political definitions hold that nationalism is essentially a political phenomenon linked to the idea of self-determination or political autonomy (Anderson, 1983/ 2006 ; Breuilly, 1993 ; Gellner, 1983 ; Hobsbawm, 1992 ; Hechter, 2000 ; Moore, 2001 ). As Ernest Gellner ( 1983 ) states:

Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent…. there is a very large number of potential nations on earth. Our planet only contains room for a certain number of independent or autonomous political units (pp. 1–2).

Gellner further states that “nation/culture… cannot normally survive without its own political shell, the state” (p. 143). Benedict Anderson (1983/ 2006 ) makes a similar claim by defining a nation as “an imagined political community-- and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (p. 6). Eric Hobsbawm ( 1992 ) also claims that “it is pointless to discuss nation and nationality except insofar as both relate to it [state]” (p. 10). For Margaret Moore ( 2001 ), “national identities… are political identities, connected to the political community with which one identifies, and cultural difference is not a crucial or even necessary element” (p. 14). The political definitions place emphasis on the identification between state and nation and the homogenisation of social, cultural, and ethnic elements of the population by the state. This means that they see nations as political communities and nationalism as political phenomenon. Among classical thinkers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of the general will, John Stuart Mill’s liberal-civic conception of nation and nationalism, and Georg W. Friedrich Hegel’s conceptualisation of the state as an ethical whole symbolise such a vision of the nation-state.

The political definitions are not satisfactory as they cause a number of problems. Firstly, by equating nationalism with the state, political definitions cause what Walker Connor ( 1978 ) describes as “terminological disease” (p. 378), making it difficult to distinguish between distinct terms like nation, nationalism, state, and nation-state. Secondly, nations sometimes exist without having their own states, nations and states are not absolutely identical, and the meaning of state is derived from the nature and purposes of nationhood (Canovan, 1996 ; Guibernau, 2013 ; Hazony, 2018 ; Lichtenberg, 1999 ; MacCormick ( 1999 ); Norman, 1999 ; Ozkirimli, 2005 ; Yack, 2012 ). As Bernard Yack ( 2012 ) states: “it is far from “pointless to talk about nations apart from the state”, that there is a distinctive form of intergenerational community associated with the nation, one that does not depend on the state for its existence” (p. 96). Further, while challenging the assumption of congruence between political and national units, he argues that the state draws its legitimacy from the national community or nation to which it remains a servant and subordinate. Judith Lichtenberg ( 1999 ) argues along somewhat similar lines that “the argument for political rights such as statehood or autonomy rests on the premise of nationhood: groups demand states by arguing that they constitute nations” (p. 169). Thirdly, Anthony Smith ( 1986 , 1998 , 2009 ), as we will see in a moment, has vociferously criticised the proponents of political definitions for downplaying the cultural aspects of nationalism. He contends that it is not possible to understand modern political nationalisms without reference to ethno-symbolic resources. Fourthly, by conceptualising a nation as an ethnically homogeneous community or a purely political community, the reliability and relevance of political definitions in multinational states or multi-ethnic nations come into question (Kymlicka, 1989 ; Miller, 1995 ; 2020 ; Parekh, 2000 ; Taylor, 1994 ; Tamir, 1993 , 2019a ). For these scholars, the process of creating a culturally homogeneous society from a multicultural society is not attractive and is bound to produce disastrous consequences as it is the cultural community to which individuals belong that defines their meanings and within which they make and reshape their goals and aims. What is evident is that political definitions are restrictive as they are not sensitive to cultural plurality and thus do not substantially take into consideration the cultural aspirations of such communities as national minorities, immigrants, indigenous peoples, and subnational groups.

Cultural definitions

Given the problems associated with political definitions, some scholars advocate cultural definitions of nation and nationalism, which define nations as ‘cultures’ and nationalism as the ‘right to culture’. Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte are the key figures among the classical thinkers who argued for cultural definitions. Both Herder, the father of cultural nationalism, and Fichte emphasised the distinctness of national cultures with their emphasis on language, which they characterised as the epitome of people’s unique historical memories and traditions and the central source of the national spirit. The cultural definitions conceptualise national identities as cultural identities rather than political identities and thus regard a nation as a cultural community, not necessarily a political community corresponding to a modern state. Yael Tamir ( 1993 ), a contemporary exponent of cultural definitions, has stated:

The right to national self-determination… stakes a cultural rather than a political claim, namely, it is the right to preserve the existence of a nation as a distinct cultural entity…. National claims are not synonymous with demands for political sovereignty (p. 57).

She believes that the right to national self-determination is only about the right to culture and cannot be reduced to a set of civil rights and liberties. As she (1993) has argued:

Members of national minorities who live in liberal democracies, like the Quebecois and the Indians in Canada, the Aborigines in Australia, or the Basques in France, are not deprived of their freedoms and civil liberties, yet feel marginalised and dispossessed because they are governed by a political culture and political institutions imprinted by a culture not their own (p. 72).

Walker Connor ( 1994 ), Will Kymlicka ( 1989 ), Bhikhu Parekh ( 2000 ), and Charles Taylor ( 1994 ) have made a similar claim by arguing that cultural groups, such as national minorities, immigrants, indigenous peoples and subnational groups, primarily aspire to fight for recognition and preservation of their cultural distinctiveness and essence, and thus are satisfied to settle for something less than an independent state. The cultural definitions advocate what Chaim Gans ( 2003 ) characterises as “non-state-seeking nationalism” (p. 25), a nationalism which he defines as that form of cultural nationalism “which at most regards state as desirable, but not as necessary” (p. 25). Tamir ( 1993 ) believes that the right to national self-determination, as the embodiment of the unique cultural essence of cultural groups and their right to develop their cultural distinctiveness, signifies that each national or cultural group, whether in majority or minority in a particular territory, is entitled to it, and national cultures are entitled to political protection, not in the form of having an independent state for each nation. Rather, the right to national self-determination is to be realised as a more limited right within a state through mechanisms such as federalism, autonomous communities, consociational democracy, or through some form of political organisation that is not a nation-state. For Yoram Hazony ( 2018 ), who also defines nations in terms of objective elements and so sees nationalism as a cultural phenomenon, the establishment of stable and prosperous states is entirely dependent on the nation; as he argues: “mutual loyalty, which is derived from genuine commonalities of language or religion, and from a past history of uniting in wartime, is the firm foundation on which everything else depends” (p. 107). Social cohesion, stability and prosperity, he argues, exist only in a state that is constituted as what he calls a national state, “a nation whose disparate tribes have come together under a single standing government, independent of all other governments” (p. 80). On the other hand, non-national states lack the key element of social cohesion and are therefore bound to experience instability, ethnic conflicts, civil wars, and, ultimately, dissolution.

The cultural definitions are also ridden with problems. Some scholars (Brass, 1979 ; Calhoun, 1997 ; Eley and Suny, 1996 ; Hobsbawm, 1983 , 1992 ) criticise them, particularly for playing down the role of the state vis-a-vis the formation of national identities and the role played by socio-political elites in constructing cultural identities. Calhoun ( 1997 ) holds that although long-existing cultural elements have made an influential contribution to materialising national identities, the process of state formation in the modern era has brought about a transformation in the meaning and form of cultural patterns and national identities. Eric Hobsbawm claims that it is the state which makes the nation and nationalism, not the other way round (1992), and the politics of what he calls the ‘invention of tradition’ occupies a central position in relation to understanding the nature of modern nations associated with and based on constructions and discourses (1983). Paul Brass ( 1979 ) makes a similar claim by arguing that ethnic and national identities are not given but rather the product of the politics of socio-political elites. As he (1979) puts it:

The study of ethnicity and nationality…. is the study of the process by which elites and counter-elites within ethnic groups select aspects of the group’s culture, attach new value and meaning to them, and use them as symbols to mobilise the group, to defend its interests, and to compete with other groups (pp. 40–41).

Given the restrictive nature of political and cultural definitions, some scholars (Calhoun, 1997 ; Dieckhoff, 2005 ; Delanty and Mohony, 2002 ; Eley and Suny, 1996 ; Ozkirimli, 2005 ; Wodak et al., 2009 ) see nations and nationalism as both political and cultural entities. According to Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny ( 1996 ), “nationality is best conceived as a complex, uneven, and unpredictable process, forged from an interaction of cultural coalescence and specific political intervention, which cannot be reduced to static criteria of language, territory, ethnicity, or culture” (p. 8). Ozkirimli ( 2005 ) has made a similar claim, when he argues that “nationalism is not about culture or politics, it is about both. It involves the ‘culturalization’ of politics and the ‘politicisation’ of culture” (pp. 21–22).

Origins of nations and nationalism: the deep theoretical divisions

In the academic study of nationalism, three theories dominate the subject: primordialism, modernism, and ethnosymbolism. The primary focus of these theories is on the origins of nations and nationalism and the process of nation formation, about which they not only disagree but provide competing explanations.

Primordialism

Primordialism believes that nations and nationalism have been in existence since time immemorial. Primordialists regard nations as organic, immemorial, given, natural, eternal, ancestral, and historically situated entities. Smith ( 1986 ) has identified four versions of primordialism: organic, sociobiological, culturalist, and perennialism. The organic approach developed by such German romantics as Herder and Fichte focuses on the naturalness of nations. It regards a nation as an organic group and believes that a nation and nationalism are innate phenomena. The sociobiological approach, the main proponent of which is Pierre Van den Berghe, maintains that nations and ethnic groups are extensions of kinship groups and, thus, are of considerable antiquity. For Van den Berghe ( 1978 ), kinship sentiments make individuals maximise genetic reproduction within the group to achieve what he terms “inclusive fitness” through what he describes “nepotism or kin selection”, a genetically based propensity to favour kin over non-kin. This approach regards nationalism as not an ethical but rather a biological phenomenon. The culturalist approach focuses on the importance of cultural givens to understand and explain the perpetual power of ethnicity and nationalism. Its leading exponents are Edward Shils ( 1957 ) and Clifford Geertz ( 1973 ), who claim that it is the primordial ties of family, language, blood, religion, race, custom, ethnicity, territory, and other cultural givens that hold nations together. For Shils and Geertz, these primordial ties and identities are natural and given, based on emotions and sentiments, and are ineffable and coercive, meaning that they are prior to social interactions and practices. Perennialism refers to that form of primordialism which, like other forms of primordialism, believes that nations are immemorial and of historical antiquity, but questions the claim of organic, sociobiological, and culturalist approaches that nations are given and natural phenomena. Against this claim of these forms of primordialism, perennialists treat nations as social, cultural and historical phenomena present in all periods of history with different shapes and recognise the change caused by forces of modernisation in ethnic and national identities. However, perennialists, such as Hugh Seton-Watson, Joshua Fishman, Donald Horowitz, Walker Connor and Adrian Hastings, have traced the origins of a number of European nations to the Middle Ages and mainly focus on the continuous impacts of immemorial ethnicity, meaning what Anthony Smith Smith ( 1998 ) describes that “Perennialists tend to derive modern nations from fundamental ethnic ties, rather than from the processes of modernisation” (pp. 223–224), and the French and American revolutions. As Seton-Watson ( 1977 ) has claimed that “the doctrine of nationalism dates from the age of the French Revolution, but nations existed before the doctrine was formulated” (p. 6). Similarly, Hastings ( 1997 ) has associated the emergence of nations and nationalism with the spread of Christianity in Europe. The perennialists thus believe in the historical continuity between immemorial ethnic communities and the nations of modernity and the modernity of nationalism.

Modernism represents a theoretical critique of primordialist approaches to nations and nationalism. Modernists argue that, contrary to the primordialist position, nations and nationalism are by-products of the processes of modernisation like capitalism, bureaucratisation, democratisation, secularisation, centralisation, rationalisation, industrialisation, urbanisation, humanism, mobility, and modern state, and that they are modern, i.e., late 18th-century-Phenomena (Anderson, 1983/ 2006 ; Breuilly, 1993 ; Gellner, 1983 ; Hobsbawm, 1983 ; Hechter, 1975 ; Kedourie, 1961 ; Nairn, 1981 ). They situate the genesis of nationalism in some social change, resulting in a transition from the pre-modern world to the modern one, and hold that the nation and nationalism have been invented against the backdrop of such transformation. Ernest Gellner ( 1983 ), a prominent modernist theorist, for example, has identified three phases in human history, the hunter-gatherer, the agro-literate, and the industrial, and has situated the emergence of nationalism in the process of transformation from agro-literate to industrial society.

While differing on political, social, economic, and military aspects of modernity, modernists concur that nations are political communities, modern and deliberately created phenomena, and are based on social communication and citizenship. As Gellner ( 1983 ) has stated:

Nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent… political destiny are a myth; nationalism, which sometimes takes pre-existing cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates pre-existing cultures: that is a reality… and in general an inescapable one (pp. 48–49).

Against the claim of primordialists that nations are extensions of and formed from historically rooted pre-modern ethnic communities, Eric Hobsbawm (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983 ) has argued that it is nationalism that makes and produces nations, and he has termed this state as an “invented tradition”. As he puts it:

Israeli and Palestinian nationalism or nations must be novel, whatever the historic continuities of Jews or Middle Eastern Muslims, since the very concept of territorial states of the current standard type in their region was barely thought of a century ago, and hardly became a serious prospect before the end of World War 1 (pp. 13–14).

Benedict Anderson (1983/ 2006 ) makes a similar claim by seeing nations as imagined political communities. For him a nation “is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (p. 6). He claims that it is what he calls print-capitalism that has primarily contributed to developing and creating this imagined project. As he argues: “the convergence of capitalism and print technology on the fatal diversity of human language created the possibility of a new form of imagined community, which in its basic morphology set the stage for the modern nation” (p. 46). It is to be noted that for Anderson, a nation is imagined, not imaginary. John Breuilly ( 1993 ) has associated the origins of nations with the modern centralised bureaucratic state.

Karl Deutsch’s ( 1953 ) ‘communication theory’, Michael Hechter’s ( 1975 ) and Tom Nairn’s ( 1981 ) conceptions of nationalism as the product of ‘internal colonialism’ and ‘uneven expansion of capitalism’ respectively, Gellner’s ( 1983 ) theory of cultural homogeneity associated with the process of industrialisation, Hobsbawm’s ( 1983 , 1992 ) and Anderson’s (1983/ 2006 ) theorisation of nations and nationalism in terms of ‘invented traditions’ and ‘imagined communities’ respectively, Paul Brass’s ( 1979 ) ‘instrumental theory’, and John Breuilly’s ( 1993 ) conceptualisation of nationalism as a ‘form of politics’ constitute valuable contributions to the theory of modernism. The modernist theories developed by these thinkers lack homogeneous character because their focus is on distinct aspects of modernisation. As, for instance, the primary focus of Hechter and Nairn is on the economic aspects of modernisation, while that of Gellner and Anderson is on cultural aspects and that of Breuilly is on political aspects. However, all modernist theorists agree that both nations and nationalism are totally modern phenomena and that they are manufactured; as John Breuilly ( 2019 ) argues: “nationalism arises from modernity, not from prior nations, even if pre-modern nations have existed in some form” (p. 61).

Ethno-symbolism

Ethno-symbolism has evolved out of theoretical criticism against primordialist and modernist approaches. It is that theoretical approach that recognises the independent role and power of memories, myths, traditions, and symbols in the making, continuation and transformation of nations and nationalism (Smith, 1986 , 1998 , 2009 ). According to Anthony Smith ( 1998 ), the father of this approach, “ethno-symbolism aims to uncover the symbolic legacy of ethnic identities for particular nations, and to show how modern nationalisms and nations rediscover and reinterpret the symbols, myths, memories, values and traditions of their ethno-histories, as they face the problems of modernity” (p. 224). Its primary exponents are John Armstrong, John Hutchinson, and Smith. Against modernist theories, ethno-symbolism puts emphasis on analysing the phenomena of nations and nationalism over long historical time-spans beyond the specific period of modernity; the significance and independent role of what Smith terms “symbolic resources” and “ethnies” in the formation of modern nations; the reliance of elites on ethno-symbolic resources in relation to their project of mobilising the masses and fashioning national identities and ideologies; the interrelationship between national past, present and future in the form of recurrence, re-appropriation and continuity of ethnic elements which are cultural and symbolic in character; and the transformation of ethnicity into modern nationalism (Smith, 1986 , 2009 ). Equally, ethno-symbolists reject the claim of organic, sociobiological, and culturalist forms of primordialism that nations are ‘natural’ and ‘given’ by arguing, in agreement with perennialists and modernists, that nations are cultural, social and historical phenomena situated in unique cultural and geo-historical settings (Smith, 1986 , 2009 ). They also argue that, contrary to the perennialist position, pre-existing ethnic elements and cultures influence and fashion modernisation as much as they are fashioned by modernisation. As Smith ( 1986 ) asserts that “in rejecting the claims of the perennialists, due weight is accorded to the transformations wrought by modernity and their effects on the basic units of human loyalty in which we operate and live” (p. 13). Thus, ethno-symbolists represent a middle position between primordialist and modernist explanations, believing that nations and nationalism are modern phenomena; however, they have developed out of and on the basis of pre-modern ethnies. For Smith, nations are formed from ethnies or ethnic communities, but he recognises that the latter, following modernity, have experienced an ideological transformation and modern instrumentalization and have been transformed into modern nationalism.

Civic-ethnic dichotomy

One of the lively debates that occupy a central position in the study of nationalism is over the question of the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism (Brubaker, 2004 ; Larsen, 2017 ; Reeskens and Hooghe, 2010 ; Shulman, 2002 ; Tamir, 2019a ), a distinction that is based on the twofold classification made first by Hans Kohn ( 1946 ) as Western and Eastern nationalism. Kohn has conceptualised the civic-ethnic dichotomy in terms of geographical areas by claiming that civic nationalism belongs to the West (Western Europe and the United States) while ethnic nationalism is to the East (Central and Eastern Europe and the whole third world). For Kohn ( 1946 ), Western nationalism, from a normative perspective, is “a rational and universal concept of political liberty and the rights of man, looking towards the city of the future” (p. 574), and Eastern nationalism is “founded on history, on monuments and graveyards, even harking back to the mysteries of ancient times and of tribal solidarity” (p. 574). Based on his conceptualisation, civic or political nationalism is defined as a rational, liberal, progressive, inclusive, individualistic, and voluntaristic-oriented nationalism that sees the principle of self-determination as the right of each legal-political community with a set of equal rights and freedoms for all its members. On the other hand, ethnic or cultural nationalism is conceptualised as irrational, backward, regressive, coercive, exclusivist, and ethnocentric-oriented nationalism, which celebrates the primacy of cultural identity and national community over individual choice, freedoms, and rights. In other words, civic nationalism, as the epitome of the Enlightenment project of rationalism and individualism, is portrayed as that form of nationalism that recognises and celebrates the choice and will of each individual in relation to the nation to which he or she belongs, while ethnic nationalism, which is characterised as anti-individualist, closed and oppressive, is presented as that version of nationalism in which the nation to which each individual belongs by birth defines and fixes his or her choice and identity. Kohn has articulated a preference for Western civic nationalism against Eastern ethnic nationalism. Elie Kedourie ( 1961 ), Gellner ( 1983 ), Raymond Breton ( 1988 ), Liah Greenfeld ( 1993 ), Peter Alter ( 1994 ), George Schopflin ( 1996 ) and Michael Ignatieff ( 2006 ), among others, follow the same line of argument, claiming that civic nationalism is inclusive, liberal, progressive and voluntarist, and ethnic nationalism is exclusive, illiberal, destructive and ascriptive. Jurgen Habermas ( 1995 ) also argues for civic nationalism in his conceptualisation of “constitutional patriotism”, signifying the necessity of developing a shared loyalty on the part of citizens of the state to the liberal democratic based-political and constitutional principles.

Such a conceptualisation of the civic-ethnic dichotomy is reductionist-oriented, misleading, ethnocentric in nature, theoretically weak and empirically problematic as it asserts that nations are purely non-cultural political communities; sees civic nationalism as the only good form of nationalism and the rest as bad forms of nationalism; considers the values of democracy and freedom as the inherent and sole property of civic nationalism; associates civic nationalism with the West and ethnic nationalism with the rest in a gross simple manner; and is biased towards universalistic claims of liberal ideology (Bieber, 2020 ; Brubaker, 2004 ; Calhoun, 1997 ; Dieckhoff, 2005 ; Gans, 2003 ; Gustavsson and Miller, 2020 ; Hutchinson, 2013 ; Hazony, 2018 ; Larsen, 2017 ; Miller, 2020 ; Nielsen, 1999 ; Reeskens and Hooghe, 2010 ; Shulman, 2002 ; Tamir, 2019a , 2019b ; Yack, 2012 ). Against the civic–ethnic dichotomy, John Hutchinson ( 2013 ) has argued:

Both nationalisms encouraged the rise of a civil society, of an educated citizenry engaged in a diversified ‘public’ sphere in which all could participate…. All nationalists appeal to the nation as historically determined and as moulded by human will (p. 76).

Criticising civic-ethnic distinction as “conceptually ambiguous, empirically misleading, and normatively problematic” (p. 5), Rogers Brubaker ( 2004 ) insists that glossily identified characteristics of Eastern ethnic nationalism form a part of Western nationalist politics as well and hence it is problematic and “impossible to hold an uncritical view of the essentially “civic” quality of West European nationalism” (p. 134). Furthermore, the logic of civic–ethnic distinction, like an ideology, is “to distinguish one’s own good, legitimate civic nationalism from the illegitimate ethnic nationalism found elsewhere” (p. 134). This means that states or secessionist movements politically employ this distinction to legitimise their state nationalist policies or secessionist national projects by presenting them, as opposed to empirical realities, “to domestic and especially international audiences as paragons of civic inclusiveness and tolerance” (p. 134). Christian Albrekt Larsen ( 2017 ) argues, on the basis of data from 44 countries, that Kohn’s distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism ignores “the within-country variation in perceptions of nationhood” (p. 13) and “lacks predictive power” (p. 18) about the birth of nations. Yoram Hazony ( 2018 ) states that Britain, France and the United States are not civic societies but national states, and their strength and stability lie not in the assumed civic nature of these states but in the national state character they have. By claiming that all forms of nationalism, whether civic or ethnic, are grounded and formed on the basis of both civic and ethnic components, Bernard Yack ( 2012 ) has termed the civic-ethnic dichotomy as an ethnocentric, misleading and double-edged myth, encouraging “us to divvy up these two components of nationhood between two mutually exclusive models of association” (p. 44). Sharing the argument of Yack, Kai Nielsen ( 1999 ) has criticised civic nationalism as a “deceptive ideology” for regarding a nation as exclusively a political community independent of cultural components and orientation. According to Nielsen, “All nationalisms are cultural nationalisms of one kind or another. There is no purely political conception of the nation, liberal or otherwise” ( 1999 , p. 127). Alain Dieckhoff ( 2005 ) argues along somewhat similar lines that what he terms “culture as a genuine resource” (p. 75) plays a significant role in the formation of a nation and legitimisation of a state’s national political project, both in Eastern and Western regions of the world. Gina Gustavsson and David Miller ( 2020 ) also argue that “although it may be possible to encourage people to give … civic elements more prominence when thinking about their national identities, it seems unlikely that the cultural and ethnic elements will disappear, since it is precisely these features that most clearly distinguish one nation from another” (p. 13). Pointing out the empirical weakness in the civic–ethnic dichotomy, Stephen Shulman ( 2002 ), on the basis of using survey data from 15 countries, argues that civic components are present in Eastern European nationalism as well, and nationalisms in Western European societies are not entirely free from ethnic components:

Overall, the data suggest that imperial and communist rule have not pushed Eastern European nationhood in a strongly cultural direction while greatly weaking civicness. And whereas most of the West has a long tradition of democracy and relatively strong and stable political institutions, cultural conceptions of nationhood are alive and well, and support for multiculturalism is relatively weak (p. 583).

In the same vein, Florian Bieber ( 2020 ) states that nations are not “permanently locked into this trajectory of “ethnic” versus “civic” nationalism. Rather, all nations have the two ideal types and oscillate between them over time” (p. 13). Yale Tamir ( 2019a ) states that the civic-ethnic distinction is theoretically inaccurate and more normative than descriptive, aiming “to establish the moral supremacy of West” (p. 425). This makes present-day politics a victim of misguided expectations and dangerous policies tending to produce catastrophic consequences:

The distinction assumes that ethnic conflicts are endemic to the East, encouraging us to ignore the spread of racial and ethnic tensions within presumed civic Western democracies, which include ethnic racial conflicts, the marginalisation of indigenous peoples…, and phenomena such as anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. By waving the civic flag, Western democracies pretend to be more peaceful and inclusive than they really are, fostering a self-image that allows them to exonerate themselves, leaving them unprepared to deal with internal conflicts (p. 431).

She (2019b) further argues that the present political and social unrest is rooted “not only in an economic crisis but also in a crisis of identity for which the civic version of nationalism offers an insufficient, too abstract and legalistic answer” (p. 165).

Regarding the civic-ethnic dichotomy, one of the crucial issues of disagreement in nationalism studies is the nature of the relationship between nationalism and liberalism. One group of scholars regards nationalism as an inherently destructive, repressive, aggressive and preposterous force (Arendt, 1945 ; Acton, 1862 ; Hayek, 1982 ; Kedourie, 1961 ; King, 2007 ; Popper, 1966 ; Tagore, 1950 ). For this group, the phenomenon of nationalism is inimical to the values of democracy, prosperity, and individual rights and freedoms, as the former sacrifices the latter for the sake of the larger project of forming a nation and is the major cause of wars, genocide, moral corruption, and marginalisation of minority communities. Accordingly, Lord Acton ( 1862 ) has claimed that nationality is absurd and “is a confutation of democracy” (p. 25); Rabindranath Tagore ( 1950 ) has called nationalism “a great menace” (p. 67) and the nation “the greatest evil” (p. 17); Albert Einstein has characterised nationalism as “an infantile disease, the measles of mankind” (as cited in Isaacson, 2007 , p. 386); Hannah Arendt ( 1945 ) has associated nationalism with “chauvinism” (p. 458); Martin Luther King, Jr. ( 2007 ) has denounced nationalism as a “false god” (p. 132); and Friedrich A. Hayek ( 1982 ) and Karl Popper ( 1966 ) have equated nationalism with tribalism and authoritarianism. Acton has asserted that “nationality does not aim either at liberty or prosperity…. It is a confutation of democracy, because it sets limits to the exercise of the popular will, and substitutes for it a higher principle” (p. 25). For Popper ( 1966 ), nationalism is against reason and free liberal society as it “appeals to our tribal instincts, to passion and to prejudice, and to our nostalgic desire to be relieved from the strain of individual responsibility which it attempts to replace by a collective or group responsibility” (p. 49). Kedourie ( 1961 ) also argues that “the essence of nationalism is that the will of the individual should merge in the will of the nation” (110). Some contemporary scholars, such as Arundhati Roy, follow the same line of argument, claiming that nationalism, as a destructive and dehumanising force, is highly inimical to the liberal democratic project and individual freedom all over the world. Roy ( 2003 ) thus argues that “flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead” (p. 47).

Another group of scholars sees nationalism as a progressive and liberating force, believing that it is compatible with liberal values of democracy, equality, and individual rights and freedoms (Greenfeld, 1993 ; Miller, 1995 , 2020 ; Moore, 2001 ; MacCormick, 1982 ; Nielsen, 1999 ; Renan, 1882/ 1996 ; Tamir, 1993 , 2019b ). Moreover, this group argues that nationalism positively supports liberalism and the later needs the former to survive and provide public goods such as social justice, welfare, cultural identity, and peace in the contemporary world. As Tamir ( 2019b ), who sees nationalism as an essential positive resource in contemporary society, states:

It [nationalism] has given the twentieth century some of its finest hours and could become the saviour of the twenty-first century. The much-discussed crisis of modern democracies is inherently associated with the breakdown of this partnership [among nationalism, liberalism, and democracy]. Democracy cannot be restored as a purely utilitarian project, only as a national one—as a framework that provides meaning and reasons for mutual care and responsibility. Self-centred individualism must therefore be replaced with a more collectivist spirit that nationalism knows how to kindle (p. xvi).

Gustavsson and Miller ( 2020 ), like Tamir, also argue that nationalism (or ‘nationality’ as they call it), which they consider essential to the effective functioning of contemporary liberal democracies, “provides the ‘cement’ or ‘glue’ that holds modern, culturally diverse, societies together and supports both democracy and social justice” (p. 3). This means that the realisation of the goal of social justice, which is a central component of contemporary liberalism, is dependent on social trust and solidarity “that only a common national identity can create at society-wide level” (Miller, 2020 , p. 25). Andreas Wimmer ( 2018 ), too, contends that nation-building, conceptualised as the process of the formation of a political community, characterised by “political equality between ethnic groups” (p. 6), around a nation helps in preventing civil wars, bringing about peace and fostering economic development.

Beyond Meta-theorisation

From the late 1980s onwards, the study of nationalism has witnessed the germination of new approaches such as feminist, postcolonial, and poststructuralist approaches. All these approaches are deeply influenced by the philosophy of poststructuralism or postmodernism. Believing that everything in society is the product of social construction associated with power, poststructuralists argue that there is no scientific and neutral knowledge, no fixed and single meaning and explanation, and no universal and absolute truth. Instead, they see the world as unstable, contingent, indeterminate, diverse and ungrounded and therefore celebrate multiple realities, multiple experiences, multiple voices and multiple truths, relativism, and constructivism.

The new approaches question the central assumptions of conventional theories of nationalism—primordialism, modernism and ethno-symbolism—and insist on theorising the issues related to nations and nationalism beyond the methodology and epistemology of these mainstream theories. They, in particular, criticise them for focusing exclusively on the single issue of the origins of nations and nationalism at the cost of such related issues of nationalism as the question of women’s identity, the world’s cultural and political fragmentation, the plural nature of cultural identities, the nature of nationalism in colonial societies, the social engineering character of national identities, the discursive nature of nations and nationalism, and the worldwide violation of rights of national minorities, immigrants, indigenous peoples, and subnational groups, among others. By characterising mainstream theories as gender-blind, Eurocentric, reductionist-oriented, and anti-contextual, the new approaches focus on deconstructing these meta-theories to unearth the issues ignored by meta-theorisation.

Feminist scholars such as Kumar Jayawardena ( 1986 ), Cynthia Enloe ( 1989 ), Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis ( 1989 ), Sylvia Walby ( 1996 ), and Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert ( 2013 ) have criticised the mainstream theorisation about nations and nationalism as gender-blind and hegemonic theorisation for ignoring the role of women in the creation of nations and the significance of gender relations in the understanding of the complex nature and functioning of nations and nationalism. Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert ( 2013 ) states that “discussions on nationalism have been primarily by men about men” (p. 806). For her, this is primarily due to three reasons: (a) the practice of placing greater emphasis on nationalism as a collective process; (b) the marginalisation of the specific role played by women in nation formation; and (c) the practice of seeing women as naturally subordinate to men. From the late 1980s onward, feminist scholars working on gender and nation have strongly challenged this trend. As Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis ( 1989 ) have incisively pointed out that women play an instrumental role in the production, maintenance and reproduction of ethnic and national processes through the following five major activities:

(a) as biological reproducers of members of ethnic collectivities;

(b) as reproducers of the boundaries of ethnic/national groups;

(c) as participating centrally in the ideological reproduction of the collectivity and as transmitters of its culture;

(d) as signifiers of ethnic/national differences—as a focus and symbol in ideological discourses used in the construction, reproduction and transformation of ethnic/national categories;

(e) as participants in national, economic, political and military struggles (p. 7).

Cynthia Enloe ( 1989 ), while analysing the relationship between gender and nationalism in colonised societies, argues that women have been used as instrumental categories both by colonialists to maintain their colonial rule and by nationalist movements to fight against colonialism and establish new nation-states on the basis of standards set by the male nationalists. She thus sees nationalism as a patriarchal institution whose values and structures are created and dominated by men at the cost of the lived experiences and personal identities of women. For Enloe, the end of colonialism has not led to the liberation of women from the meanings and identity created by nationalist movements about women since postcolonial nation-states, as patriarchal institutions are not interested in recognising and celebrating the lived experiences of women.

Following Enloe’s conception of nationalism as a masculine project, Lene Hansen ( 2000 ), Begona Echeverria ( 2001 ), Patrizia Albanese ( 2006 ), Sikata Banerjee ( 2012 ) and Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert ( 2013 ) argue that national identities are constructed largely by men, and women are excluded, in a systemic way, from shaping the national projects or identities. This exclusionary and masculine character of nationalism causes the exclusion of women from formal politics and decision-making centres. Furthermore, it, through gendered national stereotypes and by according symbolic roles to women such as mothers of the nation, causes subordination of their individual interests or identities to the collective interest of the larger body of the nation. The sexual violence against women during conflicts and wars is also symbolically associated with the nation; as Thapar-Bjorkert ( 2013 ) contends that “rape constitutes an instrument of militarised, masculinised nationalism, and it is on women’s body that the politics of the nation are mapped” (p. 811). All the above feminist scholars call for examining the ways gender intersects with sexuality, violence, religion, race, class, emotions, and other markers of national identity.

Representing the postcolonial approach, Homi Bhabha ( 1990 ) and Partha Chatterjee ( 1993 ), argue that, contrary to the West’s conventional discourse of homogenous cultural identities or the West’s Enlightenment project of universalism, national identities are deeply plural, fragmented and hybridised. Analysing the nature of anticolonial nationalisms in Asia and Africa and criticising the mainstream theorisation of nationalism as Eurocentric, Chatterjee has incisively disputed Benedict Anderson’s notion of the modular influence of European nationalism. For Chatterjee ( 1993 ), Asian and African nationalisms, which according to him were based “on a difference with the “modular” forms of the national society propagated by the modern West” (p. 5), were not entirely derivative of and modelled on European nationalism. Although Asian and African nationalist elites, he asserted, were deeply influenced by Western discourses and practices on nation and nationalism, they adapted and indigenised them in accordance with their unique cultures, economies, intellectual traditions, political systems, geographies, and histories. He explains this by categorising the realm of social institutions and practices into two domains: the inner, ‘spiritual’ domain, a native domain over which Asian-African nationalist elites have dominance; and the ‘material’ outer domain, a domain over which the West and the colonial state have superiority. He argues that, contrary to the conventional theorisation that nationalism in colonial societies has begun with their anticolonial political movements, ‘spiritual’, cultural nationalism, with which postcolonial nationalism begins, “creates its own domain of sovereignty within colonial society well before it begins its political battle with the imperial power” (1993, p. 6). The inner, ‘spiritual’ domain constituted a part of the originality of the anticolonial nationalisms in Asia and Africa. It was a vital centre of anticolonial resistance outside and independent of the ‘material’ outer domain, which consisted of colonial state apparatus and a derivative political nationalism. Thus, the nationalist elites in Asia and Africa, according to Chatterjee, have not simply imitated the nationalist ideas of European nationalism, but indigenised and adapted them within their distinct socio-economic contexts. This created a new domain for nationalist elites to develop, outside the confines of the colonial state, non-Western notions of religion, family, gender relations, literature, and other aspects of Afro-Asian societies that are modern and at the same time non-Western.

Postmodernist approaches see nations and nationalism as essentially narrative and discursive formations and argue that social identities are always constructed through a dialectical relationship with other identities, meaning that identities are mutually constitutive and internally unstable, indeterminate and incomplete. Contesting the narrative that ethnicity and nation are natural, given and independent phenomena, Etienne Balibar ( 1991 ), Immanuel Wallerstein ( 1991 ) and Stuart Hall ( 1991 ) argue that they are historically constructed categories whose meanings are based on power relations within particular situations and defined in relation to other forms of identity such as gender and class. They contend that because ethnicity and nation are socially situated, their meanings are malleable, mutable, changeable and contextual, and thus lack a stable centre or single, universal presence. For Balibar, ethnicity exists only in the form of a discourse of what he calls “fictive ethnicity” (1991, p. 96), a conceptual category that for him is not simply fiction but represents that an ethnic or national community is socially constructed, through the medium of language and race, in such a way that we assume it as a natural phenomenon. He has stated:

No nation possesses an ethnic base naturally, but as social formations are nationalised, the populations included within them, divided up among them or dominated by them are ethnicized—that is, represented in the past or in the future as if they formed a natural community, possessing of itself an identity of origins, culture and interests which transcends individuals and social conditions (1991, p. 96).

Sharing the position of Balibar, Hall argues:

We have the notion of identity as contradictory, as composed of more than one discourse, as composed always across the silences of the other, as written in and through ambivalence and desire. These are extremely important ways of trying to think an identity which is not a sealed or closed totality (1991, p. 49).

Rogers Brubaker ( 1996 ), while examining the structural characteristics and modus operandi of nationalist politics in post-communist Europe and Eurasia, has differentiated the concept of a nation from the concepts of nationhood and nationness on the basis of his reasoning to understand the nature and dynamics of a nation from a practical perspective. He has criticised the mainstream theorisation on nationalism (primordialism, modernism, and ethno-symbolism) as “analytically dubious” (p. 21) for seeing nations as real, essentialist entities and for adopting what he calls a developmentalist approach to the nation, which implies that nations grow, develop, and exist in a consolidated and stabilised manner. He states that “nationalism can and should be understood without invoking “nations” as substantial entities” (p. 7), meaning that the nation should not be treated as a reified entity intrinsically manifested in nationalism. For Brubaker, the central problem in mainstream theorisation is that it sees nations as a category of analysis inherently incarnated in the practice of nationalisms. This approach precludes “alternative and more theoretically promising ways of conceiving nationhood and nationness” (p. 15). The nation, he argues, is to be seen as a category of practice, and only nationhood and nationness are the real categories of analysis, which constitute a variable property of individual and group actions and which are something that does not develop but something that happens. To understand the logic, heterogeneity and real strength of nationalism, the complex reality of nationhood, diverse nationalist discourses and practices, and the protean, unstable and contextual character of nationness, Brubaker states:

We should focus on nation as a category of practice, nationhood as an institutionalised cultural and political form, and nationness as a contingent event or happening, and refrain from using the analytically dubious notion of “nations” as substantial, enduring collectivities… the analytical task at hand… is to think about nationalism without nations (1996, p. 21).

Similarly, Brubaker and Cooper ( 2000 ) and Brubaker ( 2004 ) question the mainstream’s theoretical approach of seeing the concepts of ethnicity, nation, race and other identity-related concepts as essential, substantial entities. For Brubaker, these categories are fluid, polymorphous and contingent and, therefore, should not be treated as reified entities with stable, essentialising character. Instead, these categories should be conceptualised “in terms of practical categories, situated actions, cultural idioms, cognitive schemas, discursive frames, organisational routines, institutional forms, political projects, and contingent events” (2004, p. 11).

Katherine Verdery ( 1996 ), contrary to the essentialist, stable and fixed conception of a nation, sees a nation as a symbol whose meanings, as defined by the symbolic, social, economic and political context, vary from context to context. For her, the modern state, through its totalising nationalist discourses and practices, produces and reproduces symbol nation and assigns meanings to it representing homogeneity and differentiation associated with ethnicity, class, race, locality, or gender. The state-created homogeneity and differences, which represent a process of exclusion, constitute a source of strength for the modern state and legitimise its existence and necessity in modern life. However, the states’ homogenisation processes, she argues, do not have a uniform character but are deeply shaped by the contexts in which the states make homogenising efforts. Thus, nationalism, “as a political utilisation of the symbol nation” (p. 227), has multiple meanings and a nation is not a substantial entity but a political fiction.

Craig Calhoun ( 1997 , 2007 ), against the conventional theories’ approach of defining nations as essential and reified entities, conceptualises nationalism as a discursive formation. For Calhoun, a nation comes into existence when its members consider themselves a nation. It is the discourse of nationalism, he argues, that plays a significant role in the production of collective identity, social solidarity and nationalist self-understandings among the people, but in an indeterminate and non-essentialist way. He criticises what he calls a reductionist approach to explain the diverse nationalisms that exist at the level of practical activity in terms of a single “master variable” (p. 21), be it ethnic identities, industrialisation, bureaucratisation, unequal economic development, state, or ressentiment. These forces help to explain the contents of specific nationalisms, but owing to multiple sources of nations, “they do not explain the form of nation or nationalist discourse itself” (p. 21), and a single explanatory variable is unable to capture the commonalities of many diverse nationalisms. It is the discourse of nationalism that connects different collectives, ideologies, movements, cultural patterns and policies and shapes all of them. “What is general”, he states, “is the discourse of nationalism. It does not completely explain any specific… activity or event, but it helps to constitute each through cultural framing” (p. 22). This suggests that a single, universal theory of nationalism is not possible:

Nationalism is too diverse to allow a single general theory to explain it all. Much of the content and specific orientation of various nationalisms is determined by historically distinct cultural traditions, the creative actions of leaders, and contingent situations within the international order. What can be addressed in more general, theoretical terms are the factors that lead to the continual production and reproduction of nationalism as a central discursive formation in the modern world (p. 123).

Calhoun’s scepticism towards a general theory of nationalism does not mean that a theory is not necessary but represents that multiple theories are needed to understand diverse forms of nationalism.

Alan Finlayson and Ronald Grigor Suny argue along somewhat similar lines that discourses are central to the formation of nations and understanding the complexity of nationalism. Finlayson ( 1998 ) argues for conceptualising nations and nationalism as specific phenomena through a discourse analysis approach to uncover the specific content of individual nationalisms obscured by totalising or universal explanations of nationalism. Considering that “no two nationalisms can be same” (p. 100), he insists that each national community is the by-product of a political-ideological discourse constructed and articulated in a specific context with a specific meaning and deployed to legitimise the totalising political projects of specific ideologies by associating them “with the apparently ‘natural’ nation” (p. 100). This means that “nationalism is not a matter of history, sociology or philosophy but always a matter of politics” (p. 117) and that nations and nationalism are not given, fixed, stable, and unitary phenomena but are variegated phenomena with particularity as their defining feature. Suny ( 2001 ), while examining the pattern of the formation of national identities in the post-Soviet republics, argues that nations are created through narratives, associated in particular with the construction of histories, which present nations as essential and reified entities. The national narratives or discourses, through teaching, reproduction and repetition, make people embrace nation and national identities as immemorial, singular, given, fixed and internally harmonious when, in fact, narratives do so by concealing “the fractures, divisions, and relations of power within the nation” (p. 871).

Ruth Wodak, et al. ( 2009 ), while arguing in favour of the discursive construction of national identities, also state that nations and national identities are produced and reproduced through discourses and that there is no singular and fixed national identity or a single vision of nation. Rather, there are multiple national identities that “are discursively constructed according to context, that is according to the degree of public exposure of a given utterance, the setting, the topic addressed, the audience to which it is addressed, and so on” (pp. 186–187). By this, they mean that, contrary to the essentialist position of nations, discursive national identities are dynamic, contradictory, ambivalent, unstable, and fragile. Similarly, Filiz Coban Oran ( 2022 ), while examining the nature of national identity in Turkey and the pattern of nationalist politics in post-Kemalist Turkey, contends that there has not been a specific Turkish nationalism. Rather, there are many diverse and competing Turkish nationalisms “which imagine different Turkeys” (p. 5), such as a secular Turkey and a Muslim Turkey, by discursively producing, dismantling and reproducing Turkey’s national identity associated with power.

Amanda Machin ( 2015 ), who conceptualises nation and nationalism in terms of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of language games, argues that, contrary to the claims of primordialism, modernism and ethno-symbolism, the meanings of nation and nationalism, as socially and historically constructed categories, are malleable, flimsy and protean with no essential meanings and stable centre at all. As a result, a single, universal explanation of nation and nationalism is not possible because it diminishes their power and obscures their “lack”, which “contains what we are missing and endlessly seeking” (p. 3), by silencing their multiplicity and diversity of meanings. For him, the power and strength of nation and nationalism lie in the contestation over their meanings and nature, and this contestation has the capacity to strengthen the roots of democracy. As he puts it:

It is actually in the lack of any final definition that the power of the nation resides. But it is also this that fills it with democratic potential. For it allows for the ongoing possibility for questioning the nation’s dominant meanings. Reviving the contestation over the question of ‘who are we?’ could, possibly, reinvigorate democracy (p. 3).

Machin thus argues for the encouragement and celebration of the contestation of nation and nationalism.

The new approaches to nationalism share that nations and nationalism are not absolute categories but historically and socially constructed categories and contingent events. second, they are less interested in the origins of nationalism and its historical evolution and more interested in its everyday existence or, to put it another way, they are more interested in the process of nation-building and in how national identities are constructed, articulated, represented, narrated and performed in everyday life. Finally, new approaches focus on dismantling the totalising and essentialising claims of meta-theories of nationalism associated with the Enlightenment project of universalism.

The paper has provided an overview of existing literature on nation and nationalism relating to debates and disputes about the meaning of nation and nationalism, their origins, and their nature and scope. Central to these debates, as an overview of literature, has suggested, lie a number of key questions: Whether nations are to be defined objectively or subjectively; whether nations make states and nationalism or the case is the other way around; whether nation and nationalism are political or cultural phenomena; whether they are modern phenomena or the extension of pre-modern ethnic communities; whether they are progressive or destructive forces; whether they are compatible with or diametrically opposed to the multiple values of democracy, equality, liberty, justice, and prosperity; whether non-western regions adopted them in the same form in which they emerged in the western world or adapted them in agreement with their unique contexts; and is nationalism about creating homogeneity in society and thereby devaluing differences, or about recognising and celebrating those differences? In this article, an overview of these debates has suggested a series of important things. First, the academic journey of nationalism has reached a stage where the current consensus is that nations are socially constructed and historically contingent phenomena, and the current focus of the scholarship is on looking at the intersection between the cultural and political aspects of nationalism. Second, nations and nationalism are not absolute, singular, fixed, and unitary phenomena but possess a multifaceted character with particularity, subjectivity, and relativity as their defining features. They carry multiple and diverse meanings depending on who is using them in what context and with what orientation. Therefore, a single, universal explanation of nationalism is neither feasible nor morally desirable. Third, to understand the multiplicity and diversity of nations and nationalism and the ways in which elements of this multidimensionality intersect, it is necessary to treat them as open-ended, unstable, dispersed, protean, particular, and contingent phenomena. Finally, deep contestation constitutes a source of power and strength for nations and nationalism as it can broaden and expand their sphere and scope by offering opportunities for exploring and analysing their multifaceted character and changing realities in the contemporary world.

Data availability

The author declares that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and have been properly cited. However, no separate datasets were generated or analysed for this article.

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Twelve Theses on Nationalism

Subscribe to governance weekly, william a. galston william a. galston ezra k. zilkha chair and senior fellow - governance studies.

August 12, 2019

• 16 min read

This piece was originally published by “ The American Interest. “

B y the end of World War Two, nationalism had been thoroughly discredited. Critics charged that national self-interest had prevented democratic governments from cooperating to end the Great Depression, and that nationalist passions had led not just to war, but also to some of the worst crimes groups of human beings had ever perpetrated on others. The construction of international institutions and norms—in economics, politics, and human rights—as antidotes to nationalist excesses dominated Western diplomacy for decades after 1945, and the global struggle between liberal democracy and communism muted the expression of nationalist sentiments on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The peace and economic growth that characterized this period built public support for this strategy.

As decades passed and new generations emerged, memories of the Great Depression and World War Two lost their hold on the Western imagination. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the postwar era began giving way to new forces. The European Union, its boosters convinced that their enlightened post-national project represented the future of politics for mankind, sought to move from economic integration to political integration. But public opposition swelled in many member-states. The “captive nations” of eastern and central Europe reemerged as independent actors, and long-submerged nationalist feelings resurfaced. But the feelings were not limited to the east: Growing regional inequalities within countries drove a wedge between left-behind populations and the international elites many citizens held responsible for their plight. The Great Recession of 2008 undermined public confidence in expert managers of the economy, and in the internationalist outlook that had long dominated their thinking. In Europe, concerns over immigration grew as people from lower-wage countries in the EU moved freely to wealthy member-states. These concerns exploded in 2015 after German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to admit more than 1 million refugees from Syria and other countries wracked by conflict and economic stagnation.

All these trends, and others, were at work in the United States. The consequences of China’s entry into the WTO, especially for U.S. manufacturing, stoked concerns about international trade. Five decades of robust immigration transformed America’s demography, a shift celebrated by some but deplored by others. In the wake of the Great Recession and the Iraq war, the costs of America’s global leadership became increasingly controversial, and the belief that other nations were taking advantage of the United States intensified. Postwar internationalism became a new front in the decades-old culture war. In retrospect, it was only a matter of time until someone mounted a frontal challenge to the consensus of elites in both major political parties. When it did, “America First” hit the established order with the force and subtlety of a wrecking-ball.

“Nationalism rightly understood means that no nation is an island, and that in the long run the wellbeing of one’s nation cannot be decoupled from the fate of others.”

The growth of nationalism as a political phenomenon encouraged the emergence of nationalist theoreticians and ideologues. In the United States, a July 2019 conference on “National Conservatism” brought together thinkers who argued—in direct opposition to the leaders of the postwar era—that nationalism offers a more secure and morally preferable basis for both domestic and international policy. Similar convenings have occurred in Europe. Critics of the new nationalism have been quick to weigh in.

As the battle has been joined, the ratio of heat to light has been high. And yet so are the stakes. Our democratic future depends on whether publics come to see nationalism as the solution, the problem, or something in-between. As a contribution to clarifying the debate, I offer twelve theses on nationalism.

Thesis One:   Nationalism and patriotism are not the same.  Patriotism is love of country—as George Orwell puts it, “devotion to a particular place and way of life.” Nationalism means giving pride of place, culturally and politically, to a distinctive ensemble of individuals—the nation.

Thesis Two:   A nation is a community, united by sentiments of loyalty and mutual concern, that shares a cultural heritage and belief in a common destiny.  Some nations additionally invoke common descent, which in nearly all cases is mythical, as it was when John Jay posited it for the nascent United States in Federalist 2. As political theorist Bernard Yack observes in  Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community , not all nationalist claims are based on ethnicity. Ethno-nations are distinct, he observes, in that they make descent from previous members “a necessary, rather than merely sufficient, condition of membership.”

Thesis Three:   An individual need not be born into a cultural heritage to (come to) share it.  Entrants into the national community commit themselves not only to learn their nation’s history and customs but also to take on their benefits and burdens as their own, as Ruth did when she pledged to Naomi that “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

Thesis Four:   Nationalism and patriotism can yield conflicting imperatives.  Many Zionists felt patriotic connections to the states in which they lived, even as they labored to create a nation-state of their own. Although many of today’s Kurds in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey harbor patriotic sentiments, their primary loyalty is to the Kurdish nation, and their ultimate aim is national self-determination in their own state.

Thesis Five:   Nationalism poses a challenge to the modern state system.  The familiar term “nation-state” implicitly assumes that the geographical locations of distinct nations coincide with state boundaries. Occasionally this is true (Japan comes close), but mostly it isn’t. Nations can be spread across multiple states (as the Kurds are), and states can contain multiple nations (as Spain does). What some regard as the ideal arrangement—a sovereign state for each nation and only this nation—is still exceedingly rare despite the convulsions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and still could not be realized without further massive, bloody disruptions of existing arrangements. Hitler’s determination to unify all ethno-cultural Germans into a single nation would have been a disaster, even if he had harbored no further ambitions. Today’s Hungarians have grounds for objecting to the Treaty of Trianon, which left millions of their co-nationals outside the borders of their shrunken state. Nevertheless, any effort to reunite them under a single flag would mean war in the heart of Europe.

Today’s state system includes international organizations, which many nationalists oppose as abrogating their states’ sovereignty. This stance rests on a failure to distinguish between revocable agreements, which are compatible with maintaining sovereignty, and irrevocable agreements, which are not. In leaving the European Union, Britain is exercising its sovereign rights, which it did not surrender when it entered the EU. By contrast, the states that banded together into the United States of America agreed to replace their several sovereignties into a single sovereign power, with no legal right under the Constitution to reverse this decision. When the southern states tried to secede, a civil war ensued, and its outcome ratified the permanent nature of the Union.

Thesis Six:   It is possible to be a nationalist without believing that every nation has a right to political independence, but it isn’t easy.  The U.S. Declaration of Independence speaks of “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” Similarly, Israel’s Declaration of Independence invokes the “self-evident right of the Jewish people to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign state.”

There are often practical reasons to deny some nations political self-determination (see Thesis Five). But doing so in principle rests on the belief that some nations are superior to others and deserve to rule over them. The claimed superiority can be cultural, hence mutable and temporary, or ethno-racial, essentialist, and immutable. The former often includes the responsibility of dominant nations to prepare subordinated nations for independence, as John Stuart Mill’s defense of tutelary colonialism did. The latter implies that subordinate nations are at best means to the well-being of dominant nations; at worst, lesser forms of humanity who exist at the sufferance of superior nations.

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There is no logical connection between the undeniable premise that each nation is distinctive and the conclusion that mine is better than yours. But the psychology of pride in one’s nation can lead even decent, well-meaning people from the former to the latter.

Some contemporary defenders of nationalism claim that it is inherently opposed to imperialism. Nation-states want only to be left alone, they say, to govern themselves in accordance with their own traditions. As Rebecca West once put it, there is not “the smallest reason for confounding nationalism, which is the desire of a people to be itself, with imperialism, which is the desire of a people to prevent other peoples from being themselves.”

She would be right if all nationalism were inwardly focused and guided by the maxim of live and let live. But the history of the 20th century shows that some forms of nationalism are compatible with imperialism and worse. It depends on what a nation thinks that “being itself” entails. The proposition that nationalism and imperialism always stand opposed rests not on historical evidence, but rather on a definition of nationalism at odds with its real-world manifestations.

Thesis Seven:   It is possible to be a nationalist without believing that the interests of one’s nation always trump competing considerations.  Writing in the shadow of World War Two, George Orwell declared that nationalism was “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” Although this is an unmatched description of Nazism, it conflates an extreme instance of nationalism with the totality.

In fact, nationalism is compatible with a wide range of ideologies and political programs. It motivated not only Nazi Germany but also Britain’s heroic resistance to fascism. (Churchill’s wartime speeches rallied his countrymen with stirring invocations of British nationalism against its foe.) And because the nation need not be understood as the supreme good, “liberal nationalism” is not an oxymoron.

Giving priority to the interests of one’s nation does not mean ignoring the interests of others, any more than caring most about one’s own children implies indifference to the fate of others’ children. Nations are sometimes called upon to risk their blood and treasure to respond to or prevent harm in other nations. At some point, the imbalance between modest costs to one’s nation and grievous damage to others should compel action. Even though some Americans would have risked their lives to prevent the Rwandan genocide, America’s failure to intervene was a mistake, a proposition that nationalists can accept without contradicting their beliefs.

Thesis Eight:   It is a mistake to finger nationalism as the principal source of oppression and aggression in modern politics.  As we have seen repeatedly, creedal and religion-based states and movements can be just as brutal, and they can pose, in their own way, equally fundamental challenges to the state system. The Reformation triggered a full century of astonishingly bloody strife. More recently, for those who took class identity to be more fundamental than civic identity, “socialist internationalism” became the organizing principle of politics, and similarly if membership in the Muslim  umma  is thought to erase the significance of state boundaries. Those outside the favored class or creed became enemies with whom no permanent peace is possible, and the consequences are as negative for decent politics as any of the evils perpetrated in the name of nationalism.

Thesis Nine:   As a key source of social solidarity, nationalism can support higher-order political goods such as democracy and the welfare state.  Democracy rests on mutual trust, without which the peaceful transfer of power comes to be regarded as risky. The welfare state rests on sympathy and concern for others who are vulnerable, whether or not the more fortunate members of the community see themselves as equally vulnerable. Shared nationality promotes these sentiments, while in the short-to-medium term (at least), increasing national diversity within states weakens them.

This helps explain why many nationalists who are not driven by racial or ethnic bias nonetheless are ambivalent about high numbers of immigrants and refugees. It also points to the most important domestic challenge contemporary nationalists face—reconciling their attachment to their co-nationals with fair treatment for other groups with whom they share a common civic space.

Thesis Ten:   Although we typically think of nations as driving the creation of nation-states, the reverse is also possible.  A generation ago, Eugen Weber showed how, over the decades before World War One, the French state deployed a program of linguistic, cultural, and educational unification to turn “peasants into Frenchmen.” During the past half-century, post-colonial governments have sought, with varying degrees of success, to weaken tribal and sectarian ties in favor of overarching national attachments.

Many historians have discerned similar processes at work in the United States. Prior to the Civil War, lexicographers such as Noah Webster crystallized a non-regional American English, distinct from British English, while historians such as George Bancroft told the story of America’s creation and growth as a narrative that all could share. After the Civil War, as flows of immigrants from Central and Southern Europe accelerated, programs of civic education proliferated—with the aim, one might say, of turning peasants into Americans. Because it was no longer possible to say, as John Jay did in 1787, that Americans were “descended from the same ancestors,” let alone “professing the same religion,” it became all the more important to create a common cultural heritage into which millions of new immigrants could be initiated. The process may have been rough and ready, even coercive, but in the main it succeeded. And today, after a half century of cultural strife and large flows of immigrants from an unprecedented diversity of countries, it may be necessary to recommit ourselves to this task, albeit in less favorable circumstances.

Thesis Eleven:   Although scholars distinguish between creedal nationalism and ethnic or cultural nationalism as ideal types, there are no examples of purely creedal nations.  In the United States, abstract principles and concrete identities have been braided together since the Founding. Our greatest President, who famously described the United States as a nation dedicated to a proposition, also invoked (unsuccessfully) the “mystic chords of memory” and our “bonds of affection” as antidotes for civil strife and advocated transmuting our Constitution and laws into objects of reverence—a “political religion.”

Thesis Twelve:   Although nationalism is a distinctively modern ideology, national identity has pervaded much of human history and is unlikely to disappear as a prominent feature of politics.  As Bernard Yack has persuasively argued, nationalism is unthinkable without the emergence of the principle of popular sovereignty as the source of legitimate political power. Because this theory characterizes the “people” who constitute the sovereign in abstract terms, it does not answer the key practical question: Who or what is the people?

The U.S. Declaration of Independence exemplifies this hiatus. Before we reach its much-quoted second paragraph on the rights of individuals, we encounter the assertion that Americans constitute “one people” asserting its right to “dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another.” Americans are one people, the British another. The governing class of Great Britain had a different view: Americans were subjects of the king, just as residents of the British Isles were, distinguished from them only by location. Even to assert their Lockean right of revolution, of which George III was no great fan, Americans had to make the case that they were a separate and distinct people. It turns out that in the case of the United States and many that followed, national identity offered the most plausible way to meet this challenge, which is why John Jay resorted to it. 19th century nationalists had richer intellectual resources on which to draw, including Herder’s account of distinct cultures, but their strategy was much the same.

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In short, national identity is transmuted into nationalism through its encounter with the doctrine of popular sovereignty. When the people are understood as the nation, popular sovereignty becomes national sovereignty.

Because pre-modern politics lacked the theory of popular sovereignty, it could not develop a doctrine of nationalism. Nonetheless, national identity has pervaded human history, for the simple reason that we are finite beings shaped by unchosen contingencies. Although we are social, cultural, and political beings, we are born helpless and unformed. We are formed first by the ministration of parents and kin or their equivalents, then by the experiences of neighborhood and local community, and eventually by the wider circle of those with whom we share a cultural heritage. To be sure, the encounter with those whose formative influences were different will not leave us untouched. No matter how much our horizons are broadened, we never set aside our origin. We may leave home, but home never quite leaves us, a reality reflected in our language. “Mother tongue,” “fatherland”—the age-old metaphor of our place of origin as nurturing, shaping parent will never lose its power.

N ational identity is an aspect of human experience that no measure of education should seek to expunge—nor could it if it tried. But as we have seen, the modern political expression of national identity is multi-valent. Nationalism can be a force for great evil or great good. It can motivate collective nobility and collective brutality. It can bring us together and drive us apart.

In the face of these realities, the way forward is clear, at least in principle. Acknowledging the permanence of nationalism and its capacity for good, we must do our best to mitigate its negative effects. Nationalism need not mean that a country’s cultural majority oppresses others with whom it shares a state; putting one’s country first need not mean ignoring the interests and concerns of others. On the contrary: To adapt a Tocquevillian locution, nationalism rightly understood means that no nation is an island, that in the long run the wellbeing of one’s nation cannot be decoupled from the fate of others. The American leaders who rebuilt Europe understood that theirs was not an act of charity but rather a means to the long-time best interest of their country. The leaders of the civil rights movement knew that they promoted not only the cause of justice, but also the strength of their country, at home and abroad.

The details may have changed since the days of George Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr., but the essentials remain the same.

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Nationalism in the Modern-Day World Analytical Essay

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Introduction

Theories of nationalism, modernization theory, evolutionary theories, types of nationalism, ultranationalism, impacts of nationalism in the modern day world, works cited.

Every person in any corner of the earth has a country that he or she considers as his or her motherland. Therefore, no matter where he or she moves, there is something in the back of the mind that reminds him or her of his or her country.

For example, United States of America has for along time being considered as the land of milk and honey by the immigrants from other countries especially the developing ones. However, regardless of this perspective, Taiwo (p 21) observes that such people remain attached to their country of origin in spite of the difficulties found there.

He point out that most of these people move there to look for greener pastures and that when they are satisfied with that they will return to their country of origin. He claims that to show their patriotism, he notes that the immigrants will not invest heavily in the foreign land but rather will invest in their country of origin.

As a result he portrays these kinds of people as nationalistic because they have put the welfare of their country ahead of their country. According to him nationalism is the loyalty or devotion to ones country. Gellner (p 54) claims that nationalism is solely responsible for the creation of a national identity.

In addition he says that nationalism makes a people in a country appreciate and have respect to each other irrespective of their faith, race, and even ethnic affiliation. Therefore, peace and stability in a region or a country is promoted when people learn to co-exist with others in spite of their varying cultures. He observes that as long as people have a unifying factor for example the president, then nationalism will be promoted.

In the contemporary world a number of scholars have come up with various explanations to explain why people feel honored to be identified with their countries. Samir (p 100) has come up with a theory which he calls the instrumentalist theory. In this theory the most striking feature is that it focuses more on the ethnic groups rather than countries or the nations.

In his discussion he observes that ethnic identity is variable as well as flexible. That is, both the content and the boundaries of the ethnic group are not rigid and therefore can change according to the prevailing conditions. He observes that ethnic affiliations are a mere way of promoting economic interests. To add on he point out that some people are ready to change their group membership once they have fulfilled their desired and set goals.

According to Bellamy (p 15) modernization theory asserts that nationalism emerges as a result of the process of transition from traditional to modern society. He claims that the modernization theory proponents zero in on the spread of industrialization, political, cultural conditions as well as the socio-economic.

According to him these are some of the issues that make a people in some countries be proud of their nation. He says that in the developed countries of Europe, Asia and the United States of America industrialization and a strong economic base has in particular led to rise of nationalism in them. Taiwo (p 15) states that modernization theory of nationalism stems from the tradition of Enlightenment rationalism and more specifically in the area of scientific materialism and empiricism.

In his discussion he tends to relate nationalism with the historical, economic as well as political advancement that is necessitated by the science and its effect to politics and also social life at large. According to him nationalism affects traditional social ties in that it breaks the progress that had previously been witnessed in the market relations for instance.

Andersson (p 50) states that people begin by having an ethnic sought of nationalism before they can develop the ‘real’ nationalism. He observes scholars have not managed to explain the period at which people change their perception from ethnic to national appreciation.

He attributes this to lack of an in depth research o how these transitions occurs and the failure to see the implication of ethnicity for today’s nationhood. According to Geertz (p 115) there exists a gap between the medieval and the modern notions of a nation. As a result of this he point out those national identities has to be re invented in the modern world.

Anti colonial nationalism

Scholars have identified a number of nationalisms that are different from each other depending on their nature and the times at which they take place. According to Sukumar (p 251) there is the anti colonial nationalism. He notes that, this took place in the period after the World War II.

After the World War II many countries especially in Africa and Asia that had for a long time been under the colonial rule of the Europeans began to rise up against such rule. In Africa for example he claims that nationalism movements claimed a lot life in Algeria and Kenya as they wanted their countries from the colonial chains.

In 1952, a group calling itself MAUMAU waged a full war against the British colonial government and true to its expectation the country attained her independence in 1963 after more than a hundred thousand people had lost their life.

He observes that although the Kenyan and Algerian nationalism turned out to be bloody other countries like Tanganyika managed to negotiate with the British who had been given the mandate to run her affairs after the defeat of the Germans in the First World War.

Blaut (p 198) observes that this kind of nationalism is characterized by people’s immense support for their country. He claims that people come in their numbers to show their solidarity with the actions of their government. He says that when a country is attacked by enemies like it happened in the United States in September 11 2001, members of the public are likely to come out in large numbers to demonstrate that they are in solidarity with the government.

According to him other actions that may cause this kind of nationalism include, the government plan to control the number of immigrants entering the country, expulsion out of the country of suspects who are considered a threat to the state security, fight against drugs as is the case in Colombia and Mexico.

Other include going to war against another country that is perceived as a threat to that country. He thus argues that this kind of nationalism is normally peaceful and in many instances do not last for a long time. This is because its occurrence is catalyzed by an event that is at hand.

Ethnocentrism

Bellamy (p 22) has noted that some countries especially those that have advanced technologically have a tendency of looking down upon those countries that are poor and technologically behind. He contends that this kind of behavior people originates from infancy when a child is taught by the parents on what or who he or she should relate to.

He says that in the twentieth century, black people in the United States of America and in Europe were despised which made it extremely hard for them to co exist with the whites. He point out that with changing time, the perception has changed and as a result such people can relate and help one another during the times of need. He calls this kind of nationalism as ethnocentrism.

Civic nationalism

Civic nationalism is another type of nationalism. According to Snyder (p 102) civic nationalism shows a country as an assembly of different people who view themselves as belonging to that nation. He argues that such people consider themselves as having same political rights and allegiance to similar political procedures.

In addition, he says this kind of nationalism is meant to instill certain values such as equality, tolerance, respect for human rights, and freedom in people as they participate in the process of nation building.

In the world today, nationalism has contributed greatly in shaping the world in its present state. Tilly (p 127) points out that, as people try to search they national identification on the international scale various events has taken place that have made what they are today. He says that one of the impacts of nationalism is the rise of new states.

According to him, prior to the Second World War, the world was literally owned by the European powers led by the British and the French authorities. In the African continent for example he states that French and British government claimed over 80 percent together while the rest of the European powers controlled the rest.

After the Second World War, most of the African soldiers taken by the British to be carrier corps returned home and demanded that the Europeans leave their territories. He points out that the India’s independence of 1947 gave a fresh impetus for these Africans to demand for their independence.

This wave spread across the whole continent and by the year 1970 more than 60 percent of African countries had been liberated from the colonial rule. This therefore gave rise to many countries that had previously not existed. He says that prior to independent Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania used to be referred to as East African Protectorate.

But with attainment of independence, each country adopted its own name with a complete government. He notes that to date there are those regions of the world fighting to secede from another country. He argues that this is all brought about by nationalism.

Furthermore, Andersson (p 54) asserts that nationalism has brought about war between one country and others. He says that the terrorism attacks on the 11 th September 2001 in the United States of America made the then president, George Walker Bush to declare war on Afghanistan that was blamed for protecting the then leader of Al-Qaeda the late Osama bin Laden.

He claims that the members of the public came out in large numbers and urged their government to retaliate by waging a war against Afghanistan. According to him, the attacks on the Twin Towers and the World Trade Centre brought together the entire American citizens. As a result they united behind their leaders and offered their support for the country to go to war as they considered it a war against terrorism.

Nationalism has also led to an increased pride among nations. Geertz (p 110) claims that as countries compete with one another, the winning one feels more superior to the other although it is the players alone involved. He says that in Brazil, their winning football culture has made the entire nation proud.

Therefore as they play another country, the entire nation is behind them so that they can continue with their winning ways. In addition he says that, countries that have progressed technologically have developed a negative attitude towards the poor and the impoverished countries.

According to him some of the citizens in the developed countries got so much pride that they cannot take or consume anything made from such a country because he or she believes that their country has the best product while the others are sub standards. Tilly (p 147) points out that nationalism have led to the fall of government in different parts of the world.

He claims that dictatorial forms of government have witnessed its own people rising against it in popular uprisings. This usually takes the form of mass action organized by the pressure groups and other activist. If this fails to work, he notes that others takes arms and uses force to topple such government. He gives an example of how the late Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire was overthrown.

Therefore, a government has to be responsible to its people or else people will revolt against is and bring it down. In addition Sidwell (p 214) argues that nationalism has brought about unifications in some countries in the world today. He says that in Italy and Germany for instance, nationalism as a tool for unification.

According to him, prior to this nationalism in Italy the whole country was divided into many city states that claimed autonomy. As a result of nationalism he points out that the city states came together and managed to form the modern day Italy. He argues that once the citizens have learnt to live peacefully with one another, they are likely to cooperate and work together for the good of the country.

Sukumar (p 254) points out that nationalism have led to the emergence of a new crop of leaders in a number of countries in the world. According to him, the young people have become tired of being referred to the leaders of tomorrow and therefore want to take up the leadership o their countries now and not any other day.

He notes that in most of the developing countries the heads of government are usually old people above the age of sixty five who have been blamed for lack of vision in their leadership. As a result there has been a rise in the number of young people taking part in elections where a significant number is vying for the top seat in their country. Nationalism has increased accountability in many government institutions.

According to Hroch (p 73) many government that had previously blamed for lack of accountability are today being held accountable by the electorate. To ensure that they gain the electorates’ confidence and thus stand a chance of being re elected in the subsequent elections, he asserts that these government have yielded to the calls by the members of the public to increase transparency in all their transactions.

As a result incidences of corruptions have gone down significantly. Furthermore, nationalism has led to persistent conflict between neighboring countries. According to Feld (p 99) when colonial government laid their hands on the colonies they drew up boundaries without bearing in mind the effects the boundaries would have on the communities residing in those areas.

He says that, while carrying out a research in East Africa, he realized that the British government divided the Somalis from Kenya with their families in Somalia. As a result of this the Somali government that came to power after the British had left tried to annex the northern part of Kenya into Somalia. He observes that even today the Somalis in Somalia considers the north eastern part of Kenya as rightly theirs and therefore continues to cause conflict with their Kenyan authorities.

Nationalism has also led to increased democracy in a number of countries. Gellner (p 127) argues that when people stand united to demand certain things from the government are bound to get them because the government is aware of the potential danger posed by the citizens should they all decide that enough is enough.

He points out that as a result of this the government yields in to the demands of the people and allows room for more public participation in the running of the government affairs. He adds that nationalism has led to some countries looking down upon others. According to him, the developed countries have put in measures that ensure that the developing countries don’t improve economically without their help.

By so doing he says that the developed nations are able to spread their influence on these nations and make them compel to their wishes. Woolf, (p 123) points out that nationalism has been responsible for the ethnic and religious clashes in some countries in the world. In Northern Ireland for example there have been for a long time clashes between the Catholics and the Protestants based on ideological differences.

According to him, these people fight with one another because of their unity in religion. That is, the believers are proud and ready to die in the name of their religion because they are proud to be associated with either side of the divide. In addition, he argues that such people will do anything possible to protect their religion from interference from other people.

Minaham (p 211) contends that nationalism has helped a lot of people to know their basic human rights. According to him when people feel attached so much to their country, they get a good chance to be taught their basic rights and therefore critic their government when such a person realizes that the government or any other state agency is not respecting human rights.

Moreover, nationalism has promoted the relationship between a country and the others. He notes that when the members of the public show their solidarity with their government actions, people and governments from other countries begin to show a keen interest in such a country and the countries may end up becoming good trading partners hence benefiting the citizens of both countries and more so those who realizes a positive balance of trade.

Hayes (p 54) has argued that if not properly looked at, nationalism can lead to degeneration to groups. He point out that, once become proud of their nation so much, they can attract potential enemies who would attack them using propagandas in order to divide them.

Once such propagandas have sunk in them, people tends to develop a sense of mistrust and with time a country that was perceived as intact may begin to disintegrate slowly and after a while some of the leaders may begin advocating for secession. He says that this was the case when the cold war ended in the late 1980s and early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

According to Kohn (p 78) nationalism has impacted on the manner in which people conduct themselves whether in public or in private. He points out that once the people realize the importance of being royal and appreciating their country and the leaders, they develop a new attitude towards that country and begin behaving in a manner likely to suggest that they respect and honor all those in authority.

Being a nationalist is a virtue that each one of us regardless of age, sex, race and religious affiliation should have. Although some of our rulers have not created a good environment for us to be proud as citizens we should take that and try to ask other people to join us in campaigning for patriotism and nationalism.

People should learn that it is their noble to duty always be ready to protect their country from external as well as internal attacks. In order to promote nationalism from an earlier stage in life the government should start an awareness campaign in school for children to be taught the importance of being patriotic as they grow up.

In addition to that, the government should introduce a mandatory unit that will be taught right from the primary school to the University level. By so doing people will be in a better position to decide for themselves on whether to be patriotic or otherwise. One way of promoting nationalism is to ensure that democracy prevails in the country.

Members of the public on the other hand should learn to co exist peacefully at all times regardless of the prevailing conditions. Liah (p 211) asserts that peace and harmony are important ingredients in the realization of nationalism. This is because for people to be considered nationalistic, they must show cohesiveness among themselves so that they can get whatever they want to achieve.

As earlier stated there are certain types of nationalism that can bring hatred among people and to an extent generate into a full scale war like it was the case in the Northern Ireland between the Catholics and the Protestants. In order to avert such crisis leaders in both camps should sit down together and iron out their differences so that no blood shed is witnessed in the future.

Once people in a country have learnt to live peacefully in their own country, it is the government’s obligation to establish good working relationships with other countries so that the citizens in those countries can benefit from such a relationship in terms of doing business.

Andersson, Eliud. Culture, Identity and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008

Bellamy, Charles. Nationalism and the State . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001

Blaut, Jim. The National Question . London: Routledge, 2004

Feld, Jordan. Minorities, Autonomy and elf Determination . London: Sage, 2003

Geertz, Clifford. Nationalism . New York: Oxford University Press, 2004

Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism . Oxford: Blackwell, 2006

Hayes, Carlton. The Historical Evolution of Modern Evolution . London, Blackwel, 2007

Hroch, Miroslav. Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002

Kohn, Hans. The Idea of Nationalism . New York: Macmillan, 2009

Liah, Greenfeld. Nationalism, Roads to Modernity . London: Penguin, 2007

Sidwell, Alex. The Age of Nationalism . New York: Harper & Row, 1999

Minaham, James. Nations without States, A Historical Dictionary of Contemporary National Movement s. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996

Samir, Amin. Class and Nation . New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998

Snyder, Louis. The Ethnic Revival . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Sukumar, Periwal. Notions of Nationalism . New York: Harper & Row, 2004

Taiwo, Shandrack. Nationalism . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004

Tilly, Edward. Varieties of Nationalism . New York: Winston, 2000

Woolf, Steven, Nationalism in Europe from 1815 to the Present . New York: Routledge, 2003

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IvyPanda. (2019, June 26). Nationalism in the Modern-Day World. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nationalism-theories/

"Nationalism in the Modern-Day World." IvyPanda , 26 June 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/nationalism-theories/.

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IvyPanda . 2019. "Nationalism in the Modern-Day World." June 26, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nationalism-theories/.

1. IvyPanda . "Nationalism in the Modern-Day World." June 26, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/nationalism-theories/.

Bibliography

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Notes on Nationalism

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of  the Orwell Estate . The Orwell Foundation is an independent charity – please consider making a donation or becoming a Friend of the Foundation to help us maintain these resources for readers everywhere. 

Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longueur , and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word , we have the thing in considerable profusion. In the same way, there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation – that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. [1] But secondly ­– and this is much more important – I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

So long as it is applied merely to the more notorious and identifiable nationalist movements in Germany, Japan, and other countries, all this is obvious enough. Confronted with a phenomenon like Nazism, which we can observe from the outside, nearly all of us would say much the same things about it. But here I must repeat what I said above, that I am only using the word ‘nationalism’ for lack of a better. Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movements and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one’s own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted.

It is also worth emphasizing once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the U.S.S.R. without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit. When one grasps the implications of this, the nature of what I mean by nationalism becomes a good deal clearer. A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist – that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating – but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the up-grade and some hated rival is on the down-grade. But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere worship of success. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also – since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself – unshakeably certain of being in the right.

Now that I have given this lengthy definition, I think it will be admitted that the habit of mind I am talking about is widespread among the English intelligentsia, and more widespread there than among the mass of the people. For those who feel deeply about contemporary politics, certain topics have become so infected by considerations of prestige that a genuinely rational approach to them is almost impossible. Out of the hundreds of examples that one might choose, take this question: Which of the three great allies, the U.S.S.R., Britain and the U.S.A., has contributed most to the defeat of Germany? In theory it should be possible to give a reasoned and perhaps even a conclusive answer to this question. In practice, however, the necessary calculations cannot be made, because anyone likely to bother his head about such a question would inevitably see it in terms of competitive prestige. He would therefore start by deciding in favour of Russia, Britain or America as the case might be, and only after this would begin searching for arguments that seemed to support his case. And there are whole strings of kindred questions to which you can only get an honest answer from someone who is indifferent to the whole subject involved, and whose opinion on it is probably worthless in any case. Hence, partly, the remarkable failure in our time of political and military prediction. It is curious to reflect that out of all the ‘experts’ of all the schools, there was not a single one who was able to foresee so likely an event as the Russo-German Pact of 1939. [2] And when news of the Pact broke, the most wildly divergent explanations were of it were given, and predictions were made which were falsified almost immediately, being based in nearly every case not on a study of probabilities but on a desire to make the U.S.S.R. seem good or bad, strong or weak. Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties. [3] And aesthetic judgements, especially literary judgements, are often corrupted in the same way as political ones. It would be difficult for an Indian nationalist to enjoy reading Kipling or for a Conservative to see merit in Mayakovsky, and there is always a temptation to claim that any book whose tendency one disagrees with must be a bad book from a literary point of view. People of strongly nationalistic outlook often perform this sleight of hand without being conscious of dishonesty.

In England, if one simply considers the number of people involved, it is probable that the dominant form of nationalism is old-fashioned British jingoism. It is certain that this is still widespread, and much more so than most observers would have believed a dozen years ago. However, in this essay I am concerned chiefly with the reactions of the intelligentsia, among whom jingoism and even patriotism of the old kind are almost dead, though they now seem to be reviving among a minority. Among the intelligentsia, it hardly needs saying that the dominant form of nationalism is Communism ­– using this word in a very loose sense, to include not merely Communist Party members but ‘fellow-travellers’ and russophiles generally. A Communist, for my purpose here, is one who looks upon the U.S.S.R. as his Fatherland and feels it his duty to justify Russian policy and advance Russian interests at all costs. Obviously such people abound in England today, and their direct and indirect influence is very great. But many other forms of nationalism also flourish, and it is by noticing the points of resemblance between different and even seemingly opposed currents of thought that one can best get the matter into perspective.

Ten or twenty years ago, the form of nationalism most closely corresponding to Communism today was political Catholicism. Its most outstanding exponent – though he was perhaps an extreme case rather than a typical one – was G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton was a writer of considerable talent who chose to suppress both his sensibilities and his intellectual honesty in the cause of Roman Catholic propaganda. During the last twenty years or so of his life, his entire output was in reality an endless repetition of the same thing, under its laboured cleverness as simple and boring as ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians’. Every book that he wrote, every paragraph, every sentence, every incident in every story, every scrap of dialogue, had to demonstrate beyond possibility of mistake the superiority of the Catholic over the Protestant or the pagan. But Chesterton was not content to think of this superiority as merely intellectual or spiritual: it had to be translated into terms of national prestige and military power, which entailed an ignorant idealization of the Latin countries, especially France. Chesterton had not lived long in France, and his picture of it – as a land of Catholic peasants incessantly singing the Marseillaise over glasses of red wine – had about as much relation to reality as Chu Chin Chow has to everyday life in Baghdad. And with this went not only an enormous over-estimation of French military power (both before and after 1914-18 he maintained that France, by itself, was stronger than Germany), but a silly and vulgar glorification of the actual process of war. Chesterton’s battle poems, such as ‘Lepanto’ or ‘The Ballad of Saint Barbara’, make ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ read like a pacifist tract: they are perhaps the most tawdry bits of bombast to be found in our language. The interesting thing is that had the romantic rubbish which he habitually wrote about France and the French army been written by somebody else about Britain and the British army, he would have been the first to jeer. In home politics he was a Little Englander, a true hater of jingoism and imperialism, and according to his lights a true friend of democracy. Yet when he looked outwards into the international field, he could forsake his principles without even noticing he was doing so. Thus, his almost mystical belief in the virtues of democracy did not prevent him from admiring Mussolini. Mussolini had destroyed the representative government and the freedom of the press for which Chesterton had struggled so hard at home, but Mussolini was an Italian and had made Italy strong, and that settled the matter. Nor did Chesterton ever find a word to say about imperialism and the conquest of coloured races when they were practised by Italians or Frenchmen. His hold on reality, his literary taste, and even to some extent his moral sense, were dislocated as soon as his nationalistic loyalties were involved.

Obviously there are considerable resemblances between political Catholicism, as exemplified by Chesterton, and Communism. So there are between either of these and for instance Scottish nationalism, Zionism, Antisemitism or Trotskyism. It would be an oversimplification to say that all forms of nationalism are the same, even in their mental atmosphere, but there are certain rules that hold good in all cases. The following are the principal characteristics of nationalist thought:

Obsession. As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit. It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit, or any implied praise of a rival organization, fills him with uneasiness which he can only relieve by making some sharp retort. If the chosen unit is an actual country, such as Ireland or India, he will generally claim superiority for it not only in military power and political virtue, but in art, literature, sport, structure of the language, the physical beauty of the inhabitants, and perhaps even in climate, scenery and cooking. He will show great sensitiveness about such things as the correct display of flags, relative size of headlines and the order in which different countries are named. [4] Nomenclature plays a very important part in nationalist thought. Countries which have won their independence or gone through a nationalist revolution usually change their names, and any country or other unit round which strong feelings revolve is likely to have several names, each of them carrying a different implication. The two sides of the Spanish Civil War had between them nine or ten names expressing different degrees of love and hatred. Some of these names (e.g. ‘Patriots’ for Franco-supporters, or ‘Loyalists’ for Government-supporters) were frankly question-begging, and there was no single one of them which the two rival factions could have agreed to use. All nationalists consider it a duty to spread their own language to the detriment of rival languages, and among English-speakers this struggle reappears in subtler form as a struggle between dialects. Anglophobe Americans will refuse to use a slang phrase if they know it to be of British origin, and the conflict between Latinizers and Germanizers often has nationalist motives behind it. Scottish nationalists insist on the superiority of Lowland Scots, and Socialists whose nationalism takes the form of class hatred tirade against the B.B.C. accent and even the broad A. One could multiply instances. Nationalist thought often gives the impression of being tinged by belief in sympathetic magic – a belief which probably comes out in the widespread custom of burning political enemies in effigy, or using pictures of them as targets in shooting galleries.

Instability. The intensity with which they are held does not prevent nationalist loyalties from being transferable. To begin with, as I have pointed out already, they can be and often are fastened upon some foreign country. One quite commonly finds that great national leaders, or the founders of nationalist movements, do not even belong to the country they have glorified. Sometimes they are outright foreigners, or more often they come from peripheral areas where nationality is doubtful. Examples are Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, de Valera, Disraeli, Poincaré, Beaverbrook. The Pan-German movement was in part the creation of an Englishman, Houston Chamberlain. For the past fifty or a hundred years, transferred nationalism has been a common phenomenon among literary intellectuals. With Lafcadio Hearne the transference was to Japan, with Carlyle and many others of his time to Germany, and in our own age it is usually to Russia. But the peculiarly interesting fact is that re -transference is also possible. A country or other unit which has been worshipped for years may suddenly become detestable, and some other object of affection may take its place with almost no interval. In the first version of H. G. Wells’s Outline of History , and others of his writings about that time, one finds the United States praised almost as extravagantly as Russia is praised by Communists today: yet within a few years this uncritical admiration had turned into hostility. The bigoted Communist who changes in a space of weeks, or even of days, into an equally bigoted Trotskyist is a common spectacle. In continental Europe Fascist movements were largely recruited from among Communists, and the opposite process may well happen within the next few years. What remains constant in the nationalist is his own state of mind: the object of his feelings is changeable, and may be imaginary.

But for an intellectual, transference has an important function which I have already mentioned shortly in connection with Chesterton. It makes it possible for him to be much more nationalistic – more vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest – than he could ever be on behalf of his native country, or any unit of which he had real knowledge. When one sees the slavish or boastful rubbish that is written about Stalin, the Red army, etc. by fairly intelligent and sensitive people, one realizes that this is only possible because some kind of dislocation has taken place. In societies such as ours, it is unusual for anyone describable as an intellectual to feel a very deep attachment to his own country. Public opinion – that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware – will not allow him to do so. Most of the people surrounding him are sceptical and disaffected, and he may adopt the same attitude from imitativeness or sheer cowardice: in that case he will have abandoned the form of nationalism that lies nearest to hand without getting any closer to a genuinely internationalist outlook. He still feels the need for a Fatherland, and it is natural to look for one somewhere abroad. Having found it, he can wallow unrestrainedly in exactly those emotions from which he believes that he has emancipated himself. God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack – all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognized for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience. Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one’s conduct.

Indifference to Reality. All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians. [5] It is the same with historical events. History is thought of largely in nationalist terms, and such things as the Inquisition, the tortures of the Star Chamber, the exploits of the English buccaneers (Sir Francis Drake, for instance, who was given to sinking Spanish prisoners alive), the Reign of Terror, the heroes of the Mutiny blowing hundreds of Indians from the guns, or Cromwell’s soldiers slashing Irishwomen’s faces with razors, become morally neutral or even meritorious when it is felt that they were done in the ‘right’ cause. If one looks back over the past quarter of a century, one finds that there was hardly a single year when atrocity stories were not being reported from some part of the world: and yet in not one single case were these atrocities – in Spain, Russia, China, Hungary, Mexico, Amritsar, Smyrna – believed in and disapproved of by the English intelligentsia as a whole. Whether such deeds were reprehensible, or even whether they happened, was always decided according to political predilection.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind.

Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered. He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should – in which, for example, the Spanish Armada was a success or the Russian Revolution was crushed in 1918 – and he will transfer fragments of this world to the history books whenever possible. Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which, it is felt, ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied. [6] In 1927 Chiang Kai-Shek boiled hundreds of Communists alive, and yet within ten years he had become one of the heroes of the Left. The re-alignment of world politics had brought him into the anti-Fascist camp, and so it was felt that the boiling of the Communists ‘didn’t count’, or perhaps had not happened. The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly.

Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. For example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly being reported – battles, massacres, famines, revolutions – tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connexion with the physical world.

I have examined as best as I can the mental habits which are common to all forms of nationalism. The next thing is to classify those forms, but obviously this cannot be done comprehensively. Nationalism is an enormous subject. The world is tormented by innumerable delusions and hatreds which cut across one another in an extremely complex way, and some of the most sinister of them have not yet impinged on the European consciousness. In this essay I am concerned with nationalism as it occurs among the English intelligentsia. In them, much more than in ordinary English people, it is unmixed with patriotism and can therefore can be studied pure. Below are listed the varieties of nationalism now flourishing among English intellectuals, with such comments as seem to be needed. It is convenient to use three headings, Positive, Transferred and Negative, though some varieties will fit into more than one category:

Positive Nationalism

1. Neo-Toryism. Exemplified by such people as Lord Elton, A. P. Herbert, G. M. Young, Professor Pickthorn, by the literature of the Tory Reform Committee, and by such magazines as the New English Review and the Nineteenth Century and After . The real motive force of neo-Toryism, giving it its nationalistic character and differentiating it from ordinary Conservatism, is the desire not to recognize that British power and influence have declined. Even those who are realistic enough to see that Britain’s military position is not what it was, tend to claim that ‘English ideas’ (usually left undefined) must dominate the world. All neo-Tories are anti-Russian, but sometimes the main emphasis is anti-American. The significant thing is that this school of thought seems to be gaining ground among youngish intellectual, sometimes ex-Communists, who have passed through the usual process of disillusionment and become disillusioned with that. The anglophobe who suddenly becomes violently pro-British is a fairly common figure. Writers who illustrate this tendency are F. A. Voigt, Malcolm Muggeridge, Evelyn Waugh, Hugh Kingsmill, and a psychologically similar development can be observed in T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and various of their followers.

2. Celtic Nationalism. Welsh, Irish and Scottish nationalism have points of difference but are alike in their anti-English orientation. Members of all three movements have opposed the war while continuing to describe themselves as pro-Russian, and the lunatic fringe has even contrived to be simultaneously pro-Russian and pro-Nazi. But Celtic nationalism is not the same thing as anglophobia. Its motive force is a belief in the past and future greatness of the Celtic peoples, and it has a strong tinge of racialism. The Celt is supposed to be spiritually superior to the Saxon – simpler, more creative, less vulgar, less snobbish, etc. – but the usual power hunger is there under the surface. One symptom of it is the delusion that Eire, Scotland or even Wales could preserve its independence unaided and owes nothing to British protection. Among writers, good examples of this school of thought are Hugh McDiarmid and Sean O’Casey. No modern Irish writer, even of the stature of Yeats or Joyce, is completely free from traces of nationalism.

3. Zionism. This has the unusual characteristics of a nationalist movement, but the American variant of it seems to be more violent and malignant than the British. I classify it under Direct and not Transferred nationalism because it flourishes almost exclusively among the Jews themselves. In England, for several rather incongruous reasons, the intelligentsia are mostly pro-Jew on the Palestine issue, but they do not feel strongly about it. All English people of goodwill are also pro-Jew in the sense of disapproving of Nazi persecution. But any actual nationalistic loyalty, or belief in the innate superiority of Jews, is hardly to be found among Gentiles:

Transferred Nationalism

1. Communism

2. Political Catholicism

3. Colour Feeling. The old-style contemptuous attitude towards ‘natives’ has been much weakened in England, and various pseudo-scientific theories emphasizing the superiority of the white race have been abandoned. [7] Among the intelligentsia, colour feeling only occurs in the transposed form, that is, as a belief in the innate superiority of the coloured races. This is now increasingly common among English intellectuals, probably resulting more often from masochism and sexual frustration than from contact with the Oriental and Negro nationalist movements. Even among those who do not feel strongly on the colour question, snobbery and imitation have a powerful influence. Almost any English intellectual would be scandalized by the claim that the white races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it. Nationalistic attachment to the coloured races is usually mixed up with the belief that their sex lives are superior, and there is a large underground mythology about the sexual prowess of Negroes.

4. Class Feeling. Among upper-class and middle-class intellectuals, only in the transposed form – i.e. as a belief in the superiority of the proletariat. Here again, inside the intelligentsia, the pressure of public opinion is overwhelming. Nationalistic loyalty towards the proletariat, and most vicious theoretical hatred of the bourgeoisie, can and often do co-exist with ordinary snobbishness in everyday life.

5. Pacifism. The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty. The mistake was made of pinning this emotion to Hitler, but it could easily be retransferred.

Negative Nationalism

1. Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

2. Anti-Semitism. There is little evidence about this at present, because the Nazi persecutions have made it necessary for any thinking person to side with the Jews against their oppressors. Anyone educated enough to have heard the word ‘antisemitism’ claims as a matter of course to be free of it, and anti-Jewish remarks are carefully eliminated from all classes of literature. Actually, antisemitism appears to be widespread, even among intellectuals, and the general conspiracy of silence probably helps exacerbate it. People of Left opinions are not immune to it, and their attitude is sometimes affected by the fact that Trotskyists and Anarchists tend to be Jews. But antisemitism comes more naturally to people of Conservative tendency, who suspect Jews of weakening national morale and diluting the national culture. Neo-Tories and political Catholics are always liable to succumb to antisemitism, at least intermittently.

3. Trotskyism. This word is used so loosely as to include Anarchists, democratic Socialists and even Liberals. I use it here to mean a doctrinaire Marxist whose main motive is hostility to the Stalin régime. Trotskyism can be better studied in obscure pamphlets or in papers like the Socialist Appeal than in the works of Trotsky himself, who was by no means a man of one idea. Although in some places, for instance in the United States, Trotskyism is able to attract a fairly large number of adherents and develop into an organized movement with a petty fuehrer of its own, its inspiration is essentially negative. The Trotskyist is against Stalin just as the Communist is for him, and, like the majority of Communists, he wants not so much to alter the external world as to feel that the battle for prestige is going in his own favour. In each case there is the same obsessive fixation on a single subject, the same inability to form a genuinely rational opinion based on probabilities. The fact that Trotskyists are everywhere a persecuted minority, and that the accusation usually made against them, i.e. of collaborating with the Fascists, is absolutely false, creates an impression that Trotskyism is intellectually and morally superior to Communism; but it is doubtful whether there is much difference. The most typical Trotskyists, in any case, are ex-Communists, and no one arrives at Trotskyism except via one of the left-wing movements. No Communist, unless tethered to his party by years of habit, is secure against a sudden lapse into Trotskyism. The opposite process does not seem to happen equally often, though there is no clear reason why it should not.

In the classification I have attempted above, it will seem that I have often exaggerated, oversimplified, made unwarranted assumptions and have left out of account the existence of ordinarily decent motives. This was inevitable, because in this essay I am trying to isolate and identify tendencies which exist in all our minds and pervert our thinking, without necessarily occurring in a pure state or operating continuously. It is important at this point to correct the over-simplified picture which I have been obliged to make. To begin with, one has no right to assume that everyone , or even every intellectual, is infected by nationalism. Secondly, nationalism can be intermittent and limited. An intelligent man may half-succumb to a belief which attracts him but which he knows to be absurd, and he may keep it out of his mind for long periods, only reverting to it in moments of anger or sentimentality, or when he is certain that no important issues are involved. Thirdly, a nationalistic creed may be adopted in good faith from non-nationalistic motives. Fourthly, several kinds of nationalism, even kinds that cancel out, can co-exist in the same person.

All the way through I have said, ‘the nationalist does this’ or ‘the nationalist does that’, using for purposes of illustration the extreme, barely sane type of nationalist who has no neutral areas in his mind and no interest in anything except the struggle for power. Actually such people are fairly common, but they are not worth the powder and shot. In real life Lord Elton, D. N. Pritt, Lady Houston, Ezra Pound, Lord Vanisttart, Father Coughlin and all the rest of their dreary tribe have to be fought against, but their intellectual deficiencies hardly need pointing out. Monomania is not interesting, and the fact that no nationalist of the more bigoted kind can write a book which still seems worth reading after a lapse of years has a certain deodorizing effect. But when one has admitted that nationalism has not triumphed everywhere, that there are still people whose judgements are not at the mercy of their desires, the fact does remain that the pressing problems – India, Poland, Palestine, the Spanish Civil War, the Moscow trials, the American Negroes, the Russo-German Pact or what have you – cannot be, or at least never are, discussed upon a reasonable level. The Eltons and Pritts and Coughlins, each of them simply an enormous mouth bellowing the same lie over and over again, are obviously extreme cases, but we deceive ourselves if we do not realize that we can all resemble them in unguarded moments. Let a certain note be struck, let this or that corn be trodden on – and it may be a corn whose very existence has been unsuspected hitherto — and the most fair-minded and sweet-tempered person may suddenly be transformed into a vicious partisan, anxious only to ‘score’ over his adversary and indifferent as to how many lies he tells or how many logical errors he commits in doing so. When Lloyd George, who was an opponent of the Boer War, announced in the House of Commons that the British communiqués, if one added them together, claimed the killing of more Boers than the whole Boer nation contained, it is recorded that Arthur Balfour rose to his feet and shouted ‘Cad!’ Very few people are proof against lapses of this type. The Negro snubbed by a white woman, the Englishman who hears England ignorantly criticized by an American, the Catholic apologist reminded of the Spanish Armada, will all react in much the same way. One prod to the nerve of nationalism, and the intellectual decencies can vanish, the past can be altered, and the plainest facts can be denied.

If one harbours anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:

British Tory:  Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.

Communist:  If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.

Irish Nationalist:  Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.

Trotskyist:  The Stalin régime is accepted by the Russian masses.

Pacifist:  Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.

All of these facts are grossly obvious if one’s emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable , and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. When Hitler invaded Russia, the officials of the M.O.I. issued ‘as background’ a warning that Russia might be expected to collapse in six weeks. On the other hand the Communists regarded every phase of the war as a Russian victory, even when the Russians were driven back almost to the Caspian Sea and had lost several million prisoners. There is no need to multiply instances. The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified – still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.

The reason for the rise and spread of nationalism is far too big a question to be raised here. It is enough to say that, in the forms in which it appears among English intellectuals, it is a distorted reflection of the frightful battles actually happening in the external world, and that its worst follies have been made possible by the breakdown of patriotism and religious belief. If one follows up this train of thought, one is in danger of being led into a species of Conservatism, or into political quietism. It can be plausibly argued, for instance – it is even probably true – that patriotism is an inoculation against nationalism, that monarchy is a guard against dictatorship, and that organized religion is a guard against superstition. Or again, it can be argued that no unbiased outlook is possible, that all creeds and causes involve the same lies, follies, and barbarities; and this is often advanced as a reason for keeping out of politics altogether. I do not accept this argument, if only because in the modern world no one describable as an intellectual can keep out of politics in the sense of not caring about them. I think one must engage in politics – using the word in a wide sense – and that one must have preferences: that is, one must recognize that some causes are objectively better than others, even if they are advanced by equally bad means. As for the nationalistic loves and hatreds that I have spoken of, they are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one’s own feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias. If you hate and fear Russia, if you are jealous of the wealth and power of America, if you despise Jews, if you have a sentiment of inferiority towards the British ruling class, you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can at least recognize that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort, and contemporary English literature, so far as it is alive at all to the major issues of our time, shows how few of us are prepared to make it.

Author’s Notes

Polemic , GB – London, 1945

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Orwell Estate .

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THEORIES OF NATIONS AND NATIONALISM: A COMPARATIVE OUTLINE

2019, European & Balkan Perspectives (2545-4854)

Interpretations of nations, their identities and nationalism can be carried out from several different perspectives. The basic theories of nations that have been studied from the 19th century to the present day are primordialism, perennialism, ethno-symbolism and modernism. This article will present contemporary theories in interpreting and defining of nations and nationalism. In this article, only one hypothesis will be elaborated: "The different theoretical interpretation of the nation contributes to the development of nationalism in some nations." This hypothesis is operationalized as follows: The descriptive method will explain the essence of the basic theories that define the nation as human, natural, or divine creation. Then, through a comparative analysis of those same theories, I will try to prove that certain theoretical views of nations lead to the creation of a phenomenon called "nationalism".

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Article contents

Nationalism, citizenship, and gender.

• Joyce P. Kaufman Joyce P. Kaufman Department of Political Science, Whittier College
•  and  Kristen P. Williams Kristen P. Williams Department of Political Science, Clark University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.58
• Published in print: 13 June 2011
• Published online: 30 November 2017

Nationalism and the nation-state are both intimately connected to citizenship. Citizenship and nationalism are also linked to gender, as all three concepts play a key role in the process of state-building and state-maintenance as well as in the interaction between states, whether overtly or covertly. Yet women do not figure in the analysis of nationalism and citizenship in the mainstream literature, a gap that feminists have been trying to fill. By interrogating gender, along with the notions of masculinity and femininity, feminist international relations (IR) scholars shed light into the ways that gender is socially constructed. They also investigate the historical process of state formation and show where women are located in nationalist movements. Furthermore, by unpacking the sovereign state, feminist scholars have argued that while mainstream IR views the state as a rational, unitary actor, states are actually gendered entities. Two kinds of feminist literature in IR in regards to the state can be identified: women and the state (how women are excluded in terms of the public–private divide, and through citizenship), and gender and the state (gendered states). In general, feminist scholarship has led to a more complete understanding of the gender-citizenship-nationalism nexus. Nevertheless, some avenues for future research deserve consideration, such as the political and cultural exclusions of women and others in society, the inequalities that exist within states, whether there is such a thing as a “Comparative Politics of Gender,” and the concept of “global citizenship.”

• nationalism
• nation-state
• citizenship
• state formation
• nationalist movements
• sovereign state

Introduction

Citizenship confers a sense of belonging to the nation-state, which is the primary actor in the study of international relations (IR). Citizenship matters because it determines the legal relationship about who is included in the body politic and who is excluded. Nationalism is intimately tied to citizenship, as it is the nation-state, through its promotion of nationalism that connects people to a nation. The mainstream literature on nationalism and citizenship omits women in its analysis. Whether focusing on the historical evolution of citizenship as the nation-state developed or assessing whether nationalism's origins are found in the process of modernization or have primordial roots (nationalism is rooted in human nature), women do not figure in this analysis. Yet, as the work of feminist scholars demonstrates, citizenship and nationalism are also gendered constructs. States utilize nationalism, citizenship, and gender in the process of state-building and state-maintenance and as a critical aspect of their interaction with other states, whether overtly or covertly.

As this essay will show, feminist scholarship has interrogated the meanings and understandings of political identity, particularly through the study of citizenship and nationalism. This rich body of literature has led to a more complete understanding of the connection between gender, citizenship, and nationalism. As with all aspects of feminist scholarship, the quintessential question, “Where are the women?,” asked by Cynthia Enloe, underlies feminist scholarship on citizenship and nationalism. While there is both overlap in the literature on citizenship and nationalism, there are also differences in the way that scholars have studied these topics. The debates and questions within the field highlight the complexity and fluidity of these concepts. For example, we can look at whether there is a positive relationship between nationalism and nationalist movements and women's struggle for liberation, or whether these are problematic for women; if citizenship is gendered; whether citizenship can be gender-neutral, promoting equality between men and women, or whether it should be gender-differentiated, recognizing the different roles that men and women play in society, mostly by virtue of women's mothering and caring role; how the division between the public and private spheres plays out in the nation and citizenship claims; and how we understand the connection between the formation of political identities (including national identities) and the historical process of state-formation and state-maintenance. As Peterson observes, feminists analyze and theorize about the “gender-differentiated consequences of citizenship and nationalism” ( 1993 :8).

Feminist scholarship is trans/interdisciplinary, with work emanating from scholars in fields such as anthropology, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology. Given the trans/interdisciplinary nature of the scholarship in addressing citizenship and nationalism, it is clear that there is no one approach to understanding these concepts. Feminist scholars have used different methodologies in their study of nationalism and citizenship, including single historical and contemporary case studies, comparative case studies, narratives, and surveys (Ackerly and True 2006 ). Feminist research also has a normative component too in studying gender relations and women, feminist scholars seek to improve women's status and rights, and overturn patriarchal structures.

Importantly, feminist scholarship on citizenship and nationalism also tells us much about the production of knowledge. By interrogating gender, the notion of masculinity and femininity, feminist scholars examine how gender is socially constructed. At its most fundamental, feminist theory, broadly defined, utilizes gender as the unit of analysis. Feminist scholars show how gender hierarchy becomes normalized and naturalized. And feminist theory can be seen as transformative when such works lead to a rethinking and reconceptualizing of ideas and topics, including citizenship, nationalism, and the state (Peterson 1992a , 2004 ; see also Enloe 1989 ; Kim-Puri 2005 ; Puri 2005 ; Tickner 2006 ).

This essay begins with a brief overview of the feminist challenges to the mainstream IR literature on the state, before turning to the discussion of citizenship. In terms of citizenship, the essay reviews the major feminist works that look at the historical formation of early states and modern states in their examination of the role of women and gender, and how citizenship is gendered. The section covers the debate in the literature about whether citizenship should be gender-neutral/equal or gender-differentiated. The essay then turns to the discussion of nationalism, and the work of feminist scholars who have analyzed the gendering of the nation and nationalism. As with the development of citizenship, nationalism is tied to the evolution of the modern nation-state, and the role of women (and men) in the nationalist project. Feminist research has focused on the role of women in nationalist movements. Research has also investigated how the nation itself is gendered. A related area of research, addressed in this review, is the debate over whether nationalism and feminism can co-exist or are in opposition. The review essay concludes with a brief discussion of areas of continued research on nationalism, citizenship and gender.

International Relations and the State: Feminist Challenges to the Mainstream IR literature

The sovereign state is the hallmark of the field of IR. The study of IR broadly defined is about state-to-state relations, assuming territorial sovereign states as the most important political actors (Marx 2002 ). Concentrating on the state as a political actor implies that factors within states (such as political parties, interest groups, bureaucracies, and so on) are less important, as such factors fall within the realm of domestic politics. Given the levels of analysis paradigm, with the primary focus on systemic factors (balance of power) and relations among states, domestic politics becomes relatively less important (Waltz 1979 ). Moreover, the centrality of the state and the assumption that it functions as a unitary, rational actor, led IR scholars to focus on topics such as war, security, power, democracy and democratization, international organizations, and the international political economy. On the whole, these scholars did not address gender and women in their analysis of IR. The 1980s and early 1990s mark a turning point in mainstream IR with the publication of works of feminist IR scholars such as Cynthia Enloe ( 1989 ), J. Ann Tickner ( 1992 ), V. Spike Peterson ( 1992b ), Christine Sylvester ( 1994 ), Sandra Whitworth ( 1994 ) and others. Feminist IR research began at the end of the 1980s, but the boom, according to Tickner ( 2006 : 19), in empirical work began in the mid-1990s. Since then, there has been a significant amount of feminist IR research, building on feminist research in other disciplines. In utilizing a gender analysis in their examination of mainstream topics in IR, these scholars challenged the dominant paradigms in the field by bringing women and gender to the forefront, recognizing the masculinist bias in IR – that “only one gender, the male, appeared to define International Relations” (Youngs 2004 :78). As Tickner notes, “Whereas much of IR is focused on describing and explaining the behavior of states, feminists are motivated by the goal of investigating the lives of women within states or international structures in order to change them” ( 2006 :25). Such research opens up the space for understanding where women are – not that they are not there, but that they are there and we should know about them. How the world works, whether in looking at war, peace, international organizations, and so forth, is incomplete without understanding where the women are located (Tickner 2001 ). For example, feminist scholars have shown that topics such as prostitution around military bases, the supporting roles of women with spouses in the military, the unpaid domestic labor not accounted for in a state's GNP, the fact that women and children make up the vast majority of refugees, and women engaging in political violence, overlooked by mainstream IR, are worthy of study (Peterson and Runyan 1999 ; Enloe 2000 ; Tickner 1997 , 2001 ; Sjoberg and Gentry 2007 ).

Feminist scholars, such as Gillian Youngs, have also pointed out that studying women and gender in the context of IR are both important endeavors. Feminist research is important for developing theories and empirical research about women. Highlighting “the concept of gender keeps to the fore the relational nature of categorizations of male and female, and signals the importance of not taking either as given or necessarily natural” (Youngs 2004 :77). Youngs also argues that we cannot get a complete understanding of IR unless we include women.

Consequently, in unpacking the sovereign state, feminist IR scholars have argued that while mainstream IR considers the state as a rational, unitary actor, states are actually gendered entities. With the dichotomy of public (political and economic – and male-dominated) and private (home family – location of women) within the state, in which the public is where politics happens, the gendered nature of states is reinforced (Peterson 1999 ; Tinsman 2004 ; Youngs 2004 ). As long as mainstream IR continues to privilege the state as a unitary actor engaged in relations with other states within the international system, the masculinist bias in the discipline remains. Elevating the status of the (male) state, in which the public sphere dominates over the private sphere, further entrenches the power divide between men and women, masculinity and femininity (Pettman 1996 , 1998 ; Hooper 2001 ; Steans 2006 ).

What emerged from this discussion of the state were two feminist literatures in IR in regards to the state: women and the state (how women are excluded in terms of the public–private divide, and through citizenship), and gender and the state (gendered states) (Kantola 2007 : 271). Consequently, when considering mainstream IR topics such as security, rather than looking only at violence/war between states, feminist scholars have looked at the connection between violence and masculinity. That violence is mostly perpetrated by men and is used against women within the state (domestic violence, rape, and so forth). Feminist IR theorists focus on that connection, which previously had been omitted from the study of IR. How such “masculinity is constructed, internalized, enacted, reinforced, and glorified” is important for understanding state behavior and security (Peterson 2000 :19–20). Security may be about war and violence at the state level, but masculinity, the militarization of states, also affects women within the state. Feminist scholars, therefore, point out that understanding what is meant by security requires an unpacking of the term. A gender analysis of security leads to different questions and answers about violence and war, and thus IR.

Scholars, such as Kantola, built on this feminist research on the state with a third approach: the gendered reproduction of the state. Such scholars recognize that the existing state structure privileges states in the international system, a privileging in which masculinity/men are deemed superior to femininity/women: “States support a certain gender order to uphold their own authority, a key aspect of sovereignty” (Kantola 2007 :275). There is a link between gender and the construction of state sovereignty: women are expected to fulfill certain roles in the sovereign state (i.e., reproducing citizens through their roles as mothers). While women perform these roles in service to the state, those same roles mean that women are also excluded from the public sphere, although as many feminist scholars point out, the public–private divide is not so wide – the public sphere is dependent on the private sphere (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1989 ; Peterson 2000 ; Youngs 2004 ; Kantola 2007 ).

Consequently, Kantola ( 2007 ) argues for feminist scholarship to move beyond the state at the critical level of analysis, to look at other “actors” (i.e., social movements) and other “sites” (i.e., the economy, cities, and the household). Moving beyond the state includes research on globalization and interdependence, topics of interest to mainstream IR scholars, particularly in the post-Cold War period (Kantola 2007 :272–3).

State-Formation and Citizenship: Gendered Entities

In unpacking the sovereign state and using a gender analysis, feminist scholars (not just those in IR) have examined the emergence of the state and its maintenance, focusing on several aspects, including the historical evolution of the state (early and modern-state formation) which included the concept of citizen and citizenship, and the debates on equality versus difference in terms of women's citizenship and participation in the public sphere. As this section will show, in examining the historical process of state formation, asking questions about whether citizenship is gender-neutral or gender-differentiated, feminist scholars have challenged the mainstream literature on citizenship.

The mainstream literature, particularly in the analysis of Western, liberal democracies, defined citizenship as the “full membership in a political community and that community is generally defined as a national political community” (Meehan 1991 :126). The work of T.H. Marshall underlies much of the traditional literature on citizenship as he focused on citizenship as an evolutionary process that begins with civil rights, then political rights, and finally, social rights (Meehan 1991 ; Parry 1991 ; Vogel 1991 ; Leech 1994 ; Siim 2000 ; Locher and Prugl 2001 ). Civil rights, which emerged in the eighteenth century , are those defined as “equal access to and equal protection by the law,” such as freedom of speech; political rights, which emerged in the nineteenth century , include voting, holding public office, and other forms of political participation; and social rights, emerging in the twentieth century , refer to “benefits of the welfare state” (Meehan 1991 :126). Thus the literature focused on rights of citizenship and defined citizenship as one of inclusion in the body politic. This work did not acknowledge that women were not included as citizens (Lister 1997a ).

Voet argues that “most feminist theorists writing in the period 1968 to 1989 agreed that feminist issues could not, or could only barely, be phrased in the vocabulary of citizenship” ( 1998 :7). The marked change in terms of feminism and citizenship came in 1989 and after with a slew of articles and books devoted to the topic, in large part coinciding with the end of the Cold War. These feminist scholars sought to bridge the neglected connection between feminism and citizenship studies (Voet 1998 :7). Utilizing historical case studies, feminist scholars drew attention to how women were excluded from citizenship (Lister 1997a ). Scholars looked at both how citizenship came to be as a historical construct and how it is practiced today (Canning and Rose 2001 :427). Feminist political theorists demonstrated that classical political theorists, including Aristotle and Machiavelli, viewed citizenship as dependent on manliness and masculinity (Elshstain 1981 ; Voet 1998 ). Marshall's model of citizenship was criticized for not acknowledging the dynamics of the evolution of citizenship as related to gender and women (Yuval-Davis 1993 ; Voet 1998 ). The emphasis on social-liberal citizenship, “the idea that everyone should be treated equally in the public sphere: the sphere of justice. In the private sphere – the sphere of the family – we may enact our personal ideas of the good life or our strong ideas of morality,” was problematic (Voet 1998 :11). Feminist scholars criticized social-liberalism, noting that women remain in positions of inequality, as evidenced by their low numbers of political representation in governing bodies and their wages relative to men's (Voet 1998 :11). The unequal position of women in society, therefore, means an unequal citizenship.

Moreover, not all states have followed the evolutionary path Marshall proposes, with differing outcomes for men and women. According to Sylvia Walby ( 1994 ), in the case of “First World” countries, political citizenship for men came much earlier than that for women. The citizenship rights gained in developing countries differed from those of the developed states. As developing countries became independent from their colonial powers, men and women often gained political citizenship (franchise) at the same time (see also Fraser and Gordon 1992 , for a critique of Marshall's work). Additionally, in many of the Western countries women gained political rights before civil rights, rather than civil rights preceding political rights as Marshall's model claims (Walby 1994 :384; see also Lister 1997b ).

In essence feminist scholars studying citizenship are interested in understanding, as Pettman ( 1996 :15) asks, “How do women experience citizenship?” She shows how the maternal construction of women's citizenship, while seemingly in the private sphere, is in fact linked to the public sphere by the state's claims on women's roles as to their service to the state. As mothers, women are expected “to give birth to, bring up, and offer to the state future citizens, soldiers, workers” ( 1996 :18).

Siim explicates “the two central feminist criticisms” of the mainstream literature on citizenship. The first feminist critique comes from scholars, Siim points out, such as Carole Pateman, who have interrogated the “abstract universalism of civic republicanism.” The second criticizes the social-liberal view of the public–private dichotomy. Both the notion of universalism of civic republicanism and the division of society into public and private spheres relegate women to positions of inferiority and exclusion from citizenship ( 2000 :29–30).

The Historical Evolution of Early and Modern State Formation and Women's Citizenship Status

An examination of the emergence of city-states in Greece reveals that the notion of a political community becomes important and has implications for relations between men and women in the body politic. As Peterson states, “Fighting for a common purpose took on new meaning, and devotion to the public sphere took priority over private desires” (Peterson 2000 :13). Thus, in early state formation/making, the public (politics) becomes elevated in status relative to the private (family) sphere, thus the hierarchy that “privileges” the public at the expense of the private. Because the public sphere was where the men were located, it was masculinized. With this view of the early state formation, the public–private dichotomy becomes fixed and determines what is considered political – the public sphere. As a result, citizenship becomes “bounded” in the sense that who is included and who is excluded, who participates in the public, political life versus those relegated to the private, non-political sphere becomes fixed and patriarchal (Peterson 2000 :14, 17).

In the conception of “republican motherhood,” as espoused by theorists as far back as Aristotle, what women had was “indirect citizenship.” In their roles as wives and mothers, women provided important services to the larger community by supporting their husbands in their role in promoting the common good of society and educating their sons to be good citizens (Vogel 1991 :68–9). It is evident, therefore, that there is a gendered aspect to the constructed citizenship: woman as citizen-mother (Lister 2000 ). She is a citizen insofar as her duties and obligations are to produce and educate future citizens and to subordinate her identity and citizenship to the male head of the household. Her citizenship rights are directly linked to those duties and obligations. As feminist scholars have explored early state formation in the Western world they have shown that this division of the public and private sphere, with women's citizenship linked to her reproductive role, heterosexism becomes a social institution linked to state-making (Peterson 1999 ).

Consequently, rather than the notion of “abstract universal civic republicanism,” feminist scholars have argued that citizenship was not universal, but excluded women, an exclusion based on the public–private divide and patriarchal structure of the state and society. Patriarchy, as Gerda Lerner notes, “as a system is historical: it has a beginning in history” ( 1986 :6). Moreover, patriarchy manifested itself historically through the institutionalization of women's sexual and economic subordination in terms of legal rulings, the policies of the state, and men as heads of households (Lerner 1986 :9). With the emergence of Western civilization and early state formation, women's subordination “comes to be seen as ‘natural,’ hence it becomes invisible. It is this which finally establishes patriarchy firmly as an actuality and an ideology” (Lerner 1986 :10; see also Mies 1998 on capitalist patriarchy). By the time the modern state emerges, patriarchy as a system is steadfast in its presence. For example, Pateman's ( 1988 ) work on the sexual contract (i.e., wives’ subordinate role to their husbands upon marriage) and the link to modern patriarchy reinforced women's subordination to men, and further entrenched the public–private divide. As noted by Arnot et al., Pateman's sexual contract, “is precisely the focus of women's struggles for citizenship” ( 2000 :165).

Western feminist scholars thus began by examining modern state making, particularly in the Western world. In this literature, political theorists examined the development and evolution of the liberal state, which emphasized individual rights and equality protected by the government. With this emphasis on individual rights and equality, came the public–private distinction. In creating and maintaining this public–private divide, as feminists point out, women were not able to participate in public life – the life of the citizen. Men were heads of households and thus women did not have legal rights separate from their husbands and fathers (Dietz 1987 ; Vogel 1991 ). Feminist scholars argued that the liberal Western state did not ensure equality for all its citizens, despite what they espoused (Dietz 1987 ; Pateman 1988 ; Jones 1990 ; Peterson, 1999 , 2000 ; Moghadam 2003 ; Steans 2006 ). And in studying contemporary citizenship, scholars have shown that while many states have overturned the “legal barriers to women's equality,” women have yet to achieve gender equality because of existing “hierarchical gendered structures” and the continued expectations about women's and men's appropriate roles in the state (Tickner 2006 :39).

In demonstrating how women were excluded from citizenship in modern state-formation, scholars examined historical case studies beginning with the nineteenth century and the French Revolution, which made claims for universal rights of all citizens. The reality belied the perception of inclusive citizenship and nationality (and with the emergence of nationalism and the modern state, citizenship and nationalism overlap). The French Revolution and the citizenship laws passed by the Napoleonic regime legalized women's exclusion. The Napoleonic Code made explicit that “familial male/female relations were central to the authority and development of the power of the modern nation-state” (Sluga 1998 :94). Here we see the emergence/reinforcement of the citizen-soldier, the link to a national army and citizenship, an army comprised of men; the patriarchal family was seen as the link to the state. The nation was to be defended by its male citizens, and fathers were to educate their sons to be good citizens and soldiers. In promoting this particular conception of citizenship and the nation-state, the public sphere was imagined and identified as masculine (Sluga 1998 :104; see also Vogel 1991 ; Stevens 2007 ).

As Pettman shows, “The enlightenment's man turns out, indeed, to be a man. The state subject becomes an individual male – citizen, soldier, worker – a reasonable man. Women are not only different, but constructed in relation to men, and given inferior value” ( 1996 :7). For example, aspects of the modern state, including capitalism, individualism, secularism, and private property, reinforced the public sphere of men's activity and citizenship, and the authority of the state (Peterson 2000 :15; see also Vickers 2006 ). Moreover, laws on marriage and inheritance became further means for the reinforcement of gender constructions and the public–private divide. At the same time that the French regime promoted the male citizen-soldier-worker, women's status remained inferior. A woman who married a foreigner “assumed the nationality of her husband” because nationality (and thus citizenship) was determined by her marital status (Sluga 1998 :94; Sluga 2000 ; see articles on contemporary cases of international marriage and citizenship in the 2008 issue of Citizenship Studies ). Feminist scholars show that in the process of state formation, “naming what is public and what is private is inherently political, because to draw the boundary is to define what is politicized and what is not” (Peterson 2000 : 16; see also Walby 1994 ; Pettman 1996 ; and Sluga 1998 , 2000 on the public–private divide and the modern state).

Thus, in studying the historical evolution of citizenship and how the modern state continued to maintain the public-private divide, feminist scholars studied how women challenged their inferior status of citizenship. For example, research shows that in looking at the early suffrage and women's rights movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Europe, these activists made claims for maternal citizenship and to overturn laws on derivative citizenship (that which derived from a woman's marital status). Maternal citizenship reinforced the notion that women, by virtue of their mothering/caring role in society by giving birth and raising children, did provide a service to the state and therefore deserved equal legal rights. Legal rights of equality, however, did not always translate into equal participation and representation in practice (Pettman 1996 :18–19; Sluga 2000 ; Spiro 2004 ). Moreover, as scholars have shown, the women's demands for suffrage were problematic for those critics who argued that “female self-determination – commensurate with the exercise of will by women – would result in both the neglect of women's maternal duty to the nation, and – by creating more masculine women – the dissipation of the virility of the nation and its men” (Sluga 2000 :502).

Other scholars have studied the link between gender, women and the state in non-European states. One of the first to do so in the context of Africa is Parpart and Staudt's 1989 edited volume that used gender to analyze the state. As in the case of European countries, women's participation in the formal politics of the state – the public sphere – is quite low. Patriarchy in these African countries, however, did not mean that women would not push for a place in the public sphere. The rich case study research has shown that in socialist states in Africa, women fared better, but not much, in terms of representation in legislative bodies. The state maintains a preference for authority and control in the hands of men – whether in terms of land, political authority, economic resources, and so forth. Class and gender are part and parcel of the colonization and postcolonization period in state development and maintenance in Africa. In some cases there are openings for women to participate and in other cases those openings do not exist. Patriarchy remains ever present as a structure of men's dominance in the state and over women: women's continued exclusion in the public sphere (Chazan 1989 ; Parpart and Staudt 1989a ; Parpart and Staudt 1989b ). Moghadam ( 2003 ) shows how citizenship is gendered in the Middle East and North Africa, as evidenced by children's citizenship coming from fathers and that divorce is easier for men, for example. Zaatari ( 2006 ) examines how women's roles as mothers provide a way to engage in public life in Lebanon. In this research and other case studies, scholars have probed both the status and practice of citizenship (and nationalism) (see Sharoni 1995 ; Swirski 2000 ; Jamal 2006 ).

Scholars have also noted that in studying periods of instability and turmoil, whether in times of civil war or revolutions, interstate wars, and decolonization, national identity and boundaries (and thus citizenship) become arenas of contestation. Feminist scholars have shown that during these times women also have sought formal equality, pushing for inclusive citizenship. The research question arises as to when and in what ways women are successful in gaining equality (Canning and Rose 2001 :433; see also Walby 1994 ; Werbner and Yuval-Davis 1999 ; Cusack 2000 ; Sluga 2000 ; Walby 2000 ; Giles and Hyndman 2004a ; Ashe 2007 for case studies).

On the whole, the feminist research on the historical evolution of the state and citizenship demonstrates that women's political citizenship is gendered and occurs through “the incorporation of gender difference into the construction of the state . Gender difference is defined by women's disproportionate association with biological and social reproductive labor ” (McDonagh 2002 :547).

Debates within Feminist Scholarship on Citizenship: Equality Versus Difference

While many feminist scholars studied the historical evolution of the state and how the state is gendered, as noted above, another debate emerged about “whether or not citizenship should be gendered and, if so, what this should mean” (Voet 1998 :15). The debate centered on the claims of Marxist feminists in their critique of the liberal state, the maternalist/social feminists who argued for “maternal citizenship,” and feminists who argued for a citizenship based on women's equal status in society. In an attempt to move beyond the “equality versus difference” debate, other scholars have argued for a feminist citizenship that recognizes women's roles in the private sphere but promotes women's active citizenship in the public sphere. In this way, feminist scholars moved beyond discussions of women's exclusion from citizenship in the state to ways in which women can be included as citizens, particularly in democratic institutions (Lister 1997a ; Siim 2000 ). What feminist scholarship contributes to the citizenship literature, therefore, is more than just the “traditional definitions and measures of political participation” (such as voting, participation in campaigns, and so on), but that “definitions of politics” in the mainstream citizenship literature is “male biased […] based on norms derived from activities in arenas traditionally dominated by men and their interests” (Jones 1990 :804). Claims of a gender-neutral citizenship by mainstream scholars belie the reality that fundamentally the basis of the state and citizenship is male (Voet 1998 ).

Thus, in the critique of liberal theory and the emergence of the modern, democratic, capitalist state, Marxist feminists argued that capitalist states oppress women, in which men form the ruling class which dominates in the society and state. Until the liberal state is toppled, and with it the taking apart of the “capitalist and patriarchal structure,” women will remain oppressed (Dietz 1987 :8). As Dietz ( 1987 ) argues, however, the Marxist feminist argument is incomplete. After the revolution to overthrow capitalism succeeds and there is economic freedom, how does political freedom come about?

Maternalist/social feminists argue for a citizenship based on women's difference. One of the earliest and foremost proponents of this view, Jean Bethke Elshtain, argues that women's mothering role in the private sphere should be elevated in society and the state as a means for women's full citizenship. In other words, the public sphere is to be restructured such that the private sphere and women's mothering roles mean the politicization of the private sphere (Elshtain 1981 ; Dietz 1987 ; Voet 1998 ). For Elshtain, “familial ties and modes of childrearing are essential to establish the minimal foundation of human, social existence. What we call human capacities could not exist outside a familial mode […]” ( 1981 :326–27). Sarah Ruddick argues for “maternal citizenship,” that women, as mothers, have particular qualities that will make for better politics, namely that there is a connection between mothers and peace (Ruddick 1980 ; Lister 1997b ; Ruddick 1998 ). Citizens, therefore, are not the individuals that liberal political theory espouses, but encompass women in the private sphere, in their roles as mothers. Because maternalist feminists argue against “both the male liberal individualist world view and its masculinist notion of citizenship,” this is not a conservative view of citizenship, but a feminist view (Dietz 1987 :11).

Many feminist scholars, however, have criticized a gender-differentiated citizenship based on women's maternal/familial roles and the related argument that such roles imply that women are more moral than men. Dietz asserts that there is a “definitional problem” for maternal/social feminism – how to define “family” and what constitutes a “family.” She points out that “Even setting aside the family as an institution, women and feminists may also wonder upon what basis we are ‘maternal thinkers.’ Are we that as mothers, as potential future mothers, as women generally, even if, individually, some of us cannot or choose not to have children?” ( 1985 :24). A further critique of maternal/social feminism is that it reinforces the public–private dichotomy and in attempting to elevate women's roles in the private sphere, ends up idealizing that sphere (Dietz 1985 :25; see also Lister 1997b ). Dietz further argues that “the bond among citizens is not like the love between a mother and child, for citizens are not intimately, but politically involved with each other,” thus the idea of maternal citizenship/social feminism based on women's mothering/caring roles is insufficient ( 1985 :31).

Recognizing that gender-differentiated citizenship based on women's roles as mothers in the private sphere reinforces women's unequal citizenship status, other scholars argued for citizenship based on equality between men and women. In doing so, feminist reinterpretations of citizenship also moved beyond the equality versus difference debate. Democratic citizenship, in which all participate because all are included, is what matters: “Being a citizen is not (the same as) being a mother, nor vice versa” (Dietz 1985 :33).

Scholars have looked at the connection between gender and citizenship by focusing on a range of topics including women's status and position in the welfare state, women and the nation, women and democracy, and so forth (Voet 1998 :12–13; see also Hobson 2000 ). In doing so, these scholars opened up the public–private divide by articulating what it means to be a citizen, more than just understood as that which happens in the public sphere (Voet 1998 ; Lister 2007 ). Rather than emphasizing “gender-neutral” or “gender-differentiated” citizenship, scholarship in the field of gender and citizenship studies moved to a discussion of “gender-inclusive,” particularly with the work of Ruth Lister starting in the early 1990s and after (Gordon-Zolov and Rogers 2010 :15). In essence, by looking at the issues of poverty, children, disability, and so forth, works such as these focus on both the status and practice of citizenship (Werbner and Yuval-Davis 1999 ; Canning and Rose 2001 ; Lister 2007 ). Utilizing a gender analysis, this research demonstrates that women may have the status of citizenship within their states, but not the practice of it, given discrimination and the continuing views of women's roles and location in the private sphere (Canning and Rose 2001 :427). Lister argues that “the public–private divide has to be seen as an essentially contested concept” ( 2000 :44). For her, a “woman-friendly conception of citizenship” would bring together “the gender-neutrality of an approach which seeks to enable women to participate with men as equals in the public sphere (suitably transformed) with a gender-differentiated recognition and valuing of women's responsibilities in the private sphere” ( 2000 :74). Consequently, for women's inclusion in the public sphere and thus full citizenship, feminist scholars such as Lister argue that there needs to be a fundamental redefinition of the private and public spheres – “radical changes.” This means a rethinking of the value of unpaid care work and wage labor; a change in men's behavior in the public and private spheres is needed. The state needs to recognize and value women's unpaid care work and not exclude women from the public sphere (Lister 1993 :13; Lister 2000 ; see also Kershaw 2010 on caregiving and political citizenship).

Building on the work of Lister and others focused on a gender-inclusive citizenship, comparative case studies examining the processes and practices of citizenship enabled scholars to investigate women's exclusion or inclusion as citizens. For example, Siim ( 2000 ) looked at the processes and practices of citizenship in three welfare states in Europe (Britain, Denmark, and France), particularly in understanding the gendered division of wage labor and unpaid care work, how men are still considered the breadwinners with women continuing to be dependent on men. In doing so, she noted the feminist debate of equality versus difference, recognizing that there exists a tension in feminist scholarship. In an examination of the United States, in which women gained the right to vote and use maternalist imagery, McDonagh ( 2002 :548) argues for individual equality in terms of not only political citizenship for women but also women's group difference (productive and reproductive labor) as a means for women gaining full citizenship and thus moves beyond the debate on equality versus difference. Recent feminist research continues to argue for a gender-inclusive citizenship (e.g., Longo 2001 ; for an analysis of EU gender-equality policies see Meier and Lombardo 2008 ).

Feminist scholars, in recognizing that for public policies to be made that address the needs of women (by virtue of their location in the society and state) such as childcare, healthcare, education, and so forth, argue that women must become politically active. As many scholars have shown in case studies, when women do organize politically on issues of relevance to them, issues found in the private sphere, they become aware of the fact that they share issues and interests with other women, many of whom may not be mothers (Dietz 1985 ). For example, work on women's peace movements in Israel shows that such movements can transform gendered ideas about the rights of women to participate in political activism. Some women's groups combine motherhood with peace, while others are explicitly feminist, seeking to transform the patriarchal structure of the society (Werbner 1999 :233). Cockburn's ( 1998 ) work on women's activism in Bosnia, Israel and Northern Ireland, resulted from women's recognition of issues that transcended their differences and enabled them to engage in the public sphere during times of conflict.

As feminist scholars repeatedly point out, however, feminists must also recognize that there are differences among women: “Not all women occupy the same gender territory” (Pettman 1996 :22). Women's experiences with and within the state are not uniform. Instead women's experiences are those of individual and specific women (Jones 1990 ; Pettman 1996 ; Pettman 1998 ; Jacoby 1999 ). As will be seen in the next section on nationalism and gender, not all women experience nationalism and the nation the same way. Some women are able to push for women's rights in the context of national liberation struggles, while for others nationalism is fraught with difficulty in terms of promoting women's rights and thus inclusion in the nation as citizens.

Nationalism and Gender

Emerging from disciplines such as anthropology, history, psychology, and sociology, the literature on nationalism has traditionally focused on the origins, development, and evolution of nations and nationalism, ethnic politics, and national identity. Scholars sought to define a nation and national group (in contrast to an ethnic group and ethnicity), linking characteristics of ethnicity (“common myths and historical memories, a mass public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members” (Smith 1991 :14)) with territory. The development of nations and national identity relates directly to nationalism, which is defined as an ideology “which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent” (Gellner 1983 :1). Mainstream scholars of nationalism assert that modernization, psychological factors, sociological factors, and historical processes are all central to the development of nationalism and national identity (Smith 1971 ; Connor 1978 ; Gellner 1983 ; Hobsbawm 1990 ; Smith 2001 ). In framing the main approaches to nationalism, scholars focus on primordialism, modernization, and instrumentalist approaches. Primordialism understands nationalism and national identity as rooted in human nature – the psychological and emotional need of individuals to belong to a group, a collective entity. Scholars look to the roles of language, culture, traditions, and history as some of the factors that lead to the development of group consciousness that is reinforced over time in the form of national/ethnic identity (Shils 1995 ). For others, the process of modernization (such as the development of print technology and capitalism, industrialization, urbanization) transforms states into more homogeneous societies. In turn, national identity and nationalism develop (Gellner 1983 ; Hobsbawm 1990 ; Anderson 1991 ; Byman 2002 ). It is with the French Revolution and industrial revolution originating from Britain that one sees the beginnings of nationalism – and the modern state (noted earlier in the section on citizenship) (Hearn 2006 ). Instrumentalist approaches to nationalism and national identity look at how political elites use nationalism to garner the support of the masses (Dawisha 2002 ).

Importantly, in all these variants, the mainstream literature on nationalism omitted gender and women in its analysis. One measure of this omission is evidenced by entries on women and gender in major edited works on nationalism and ethnicity that survey the literature. For example, the comprehensive reader, Nationalism , edited by two sociologists, John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith ( 1994 ), lists 49 entries, only one of which has “women” in the title and which has a specific focus on women, gender and nationalism (chapter by Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1994 ). In 1996 , Hutchinson and Smith published another edited reader, Ethnicity , of which only one of 63 entries had “women” in the title (chapter by Kandiyoti 1996 ).

In attempting to consider the location of women and gender in nationalism and the nation, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, feminist scholars challenged the mainstream literature (see, for example, Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1989 ; Enloe 1989 ; Walby 1992 ; Hall et al. 1993 ; Yuval-Davis 1993 , 1997 ; Peterson 1993 , 1999 ; Cockburn 1998 ; Nagel 1998 ). Several feminist/women's studies interdisciplinary journals published special issues (all in the 1990s) focused on nationalism and citizenship, including three special issues of Feminist Review . “Nationalisms and National Identities” ( 1993a ), “Thinking Through Ethnicities” ( 1993b ), and “Citizenship: Pushing the Boundaries” ( 1997 ). Two other journals focusing on feminist/women's studies published special issues on these topics: Gender and History , “Gender, nationalisms and national identities” ( 1993 ) and Women's Studies International Forum , “Links Across Differences: Gender, Ethnicity, and Nationalism” ( 1996 ). As further evidence of the richness of feminist scholarship that emerged from the work done in the 1990s, the major mainstream journal, Nations and Nationalism , published a special issue on “Gender and Nationalism” in October 2000 .

In challenging the mainstream literature, feminist scholars highlighted the connection between the emergence of the modern nation-state and nationalism and the privileging of the public sphere over the private sphere, which, in turn, meant the privileging of the male citizen-soldier over the female citizen, masculinity and militarization in service of the state, and so forth (Peterson 1999 ; see also Tinsman 2004 for a review of recent works). Feminist scholars have approached nationalism in two main ways: (1) through the examination of women's roles in nationalist movements, and (2) the development of theory in analyzing the “ways in which ‘the nation’ is premised on particular gender identities and meanings” (Ranchod-Nilsson and Tetreault 2000a :2–3). Relatedly, in exploring nationalism, scholars have debated whether nationalism and feminism are “compatible” and can “coincide” (West 1992 , 1997 ; Einhorn 1996 ; Cockburn 1998 ; Cockburn 2000 ; Delap et al. 2006 ). Through an examination of case studies, such works have shown how nationalist movements may provide the opening for women to make gains in their political, social, and economic rights. At other times, women are expected to return to their traditional gender roles when the nationalist movement succeeds (Jacoby 1999 ; Cockburn 2000 ; Alison 2004 ).

Role of Women in Nationalist Movements

Recognizing the omission of women in analyzing nationalist movements, feminist scholars began to investigate where women are located in such movements, particularly in the developing countries as a result of colonialism and imperialism (Ranchod-Nilsson and Tetreault 2000a ; see also Jayawardena 1986 ; Kandiyoti 2000 ). These works were in the form of case studies in which women participated in anticolonial movements, looking at the role of modernization in terms of nationalist and feminist goals. Women argued for equality in the political, cultural, and economic spheres in their support for nationalist movements. In this way, women sought equality in domestic politics. When anticolonial movements were also traditional, women's calls for equality did not succeed – hence the link to modernization (Ranchod-Nilsson 2000 ).

Kumari Jayawardena's pathbreaking 1986 work, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World , examined women's participation in nationalist movements in Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She showed how women from both the middle class and working class joined the struggle for national self-determination and the end of colonialism. In exploring women's roles in nationalist liberation movements, Jayawardena noted the connection between class and capitalism and the class differences of women (and men) within these societies. Her work demonstrated that women are not monolithic – some women fought for equal rights “within the framework of capitalism and the post-colonial state in which the bourgeoisie retained power […] others continued the struggle, joined revolutionary movements for social and economic change, and brought a revolutionary feminist perspective into political movements” (Jayawardena 1986 :ii). For the leaders of these nationalist movements at the time, women's emancipation was front and center. Yet, for many, including women themselves, the maintenance of family as the basic unit of society mattered. Thus for some in the reform movement, Jayawardena found, there existed a conservative bias with women remaining in a subordinate role and lack of questioning of the patriarchal structure. In the end, women's emancipation was subordinate to the nationalist liberation movement. With independence and the emergence of new states, women were expected to go back to their gendered roles, subordinate to men (Jayawardena 1986 ). This observation, that after the revolution was won women were expected to return to the private sphere, was made by other scholars analyzing nationalism and nationalist movements (Werbner and Yuval-Davis 1999 ; Blom et al. 2000 ; Ranchod-Nilsson and Tetreault 2000b ).

Ranchod-Nilsson argues that “While this early work on women and nationalism challenged the location, form, and focus of nationalist politics, it remained situated in broader narratives of class struggle, national independence, modernization, and state consolidation. In case after case women appeared to be losers because they were politically marginalized during periods of state consolidation following successful nationalist movements” ( 2000 :168). Ranchod-Nilsson and Tetreault also show that the literature mostly did not go further in addressing the connection between gender, nationalism and citizenship, noting that “nationality and citizenship are far more complex and internally differentiated concepts than they usually are represented as being” ( 2000 a:5). As will be discussed below, scholarship then moved to focus on gender, rather than women, looking at the totality of the relationships that are socially constructed and the power distribution that results (Kandiyoti 2000 ).

Gendered Nationalism: Constructing the Nation

Rather than examining the role of women in specific nationalist movements per se, other scholars have focused on gender and nationalism, namely the “gender dimensions of cultural constructions of ‘the nation’” and “multiple ways in which women are implicated in nationalist struggles that transcend particular social movements” (Ranchod-Nilsson and Tetreault 2000a :5). Studying how women are implicated in these struggles tells us much about “the gender dimensions” of concepts such as citizenship, nation, and state (Ranchod-Nilsson and Tetreault 2000a :5). Scholars have addressed the gendered constructions of masculinity and femininity, and how women serve the nation as reproducers (within the private sphere) and men serve the nation as the protectors (defending the nation in the public sphere). The interplay between these two roles shows that these two spheres are fluid and not easily separated. The markers of who belongs within the nation matter, and gender serves as one of those markers (Blom 2000 :17).

Consequently, recognizing that the evolution of the state and nation (and the connection to citizenship), and nationalism and national identity, is replete with gendered constructions, led scholars to categorize the ways in which nationalism is gendered. The pioneering work of feminist scholars Anthias and Yuval-Davis ( 1989 ) and Peterson ( 1999 ) laid the groundwork for a research agenda on the connection between gender, nations, and nationalism through the articulation of ways in which “gendered nationalism” manifests itself (see also West 1992 ; McClintock 1993 ; Enloe 1998 ; Werbner and Yuval-Davis 1999 ; Walby 2000 ). For example, through policies that restrict access to contraception and abortion or those that provide “material rewards” for having more children, women are considered the “biological reproducers of group members.” In their capacity to give birth and role as nurturers and caregivers of society, women are expected to reproduce for the nation. Legislation pertaining to child custody, marriage, property rights, and so forth enables the state to determine the membership in the state – who is a citizen (Peterson 1998 :43–4). In such patriarchal structures, women socialize children in terms of the “beliefs, behaviors, and loyalties that are culturally appropriate and ensure intergenerational continuity” (Peterson 1998 :44).

Women become the “signifiers of group differences” in which they are the “symbolic markers of the nation and of the group's cultural identity.” In other words, the view of woman-as-nation demarcates the boundaries of a group's identity, enabling it to be compared to other groups (Peterson, 1998 :44). The need to preserve and promote the nation and its cultural identity places pressures, therefore, on women to behave in a certain way (Peterson 1999 ). The promotion of women's reproductive roles and imagery of the nation that is based on familial terms (“birth, blood, sons”) is linked to the differentiation of gender, and also “essentialized, man as warrior, woman as nurturer” (Cockburn 1998 :42).

As with the literature on the role of women in nationalist movements, the gendered nationalism focus shows that women do participate in nationalist causes, including conflict and war. As scholars have demonstrated, women support combatants through feeding and clothing them or engage in conflict themselves, often in women-only militias. In this way, women's perceived role in the private sphere of the family is complemented with the public sphere of the nation (Peterson 1998 , 1999 ; for case studies see Lilly and Irvine 2002 ; Alison 2004 ; Bouta et al. 2005 ; McEvoy 2009 ).

The ways in which nations are gendered entities are clearly linked to sexuality, in particular, the heterosexual relations within the patriarchal family structure, supported and reinforced by the state (Peterson 1999 ; see also Mosse 1985 ; Mayer 2000 ). Homosexuals are viewed with suspicion as their loyalty to the nation-state is questioned by asking how patriotic they can really be as their behavior is seen to transgress what is claimed to be appropriate sexual conduct and gender roles (Nagel 2000 :120). For ethnic/national groups, therefore, there is “correct heterosexual masculine and feminine behavior” in which women of one's ethnic/national group are “often depicted as virgins, mothers, pure” while women of the other group are considered “sluts, whores, soiled.” Men of one's ethnic/national group are considered “virile, strong, brave,” while those of the other group are characterized as “degenerate, weak, cowardly.” Men's and women's “proper gender roles and sexual behavior” matter for the nation (Nagel 2000 :113). Women's sexuality matters for nationalism because women play a role as a symbol of the nation, and as “wives and daughters” they “are bearers of masculine honor.” Digressions from the appropriate sexual behavior bring dishonor to the nation, and thus to men (Nagel 1998 :256). For example, women in mixed marriages are often seen as transgressing appropriate sexual behavior. By marrying a man from another ethnic or national group, a woman is perceived as betraying her own group, and her loyalty is considered suspect (McClintock 1993 ; Sluga 2000 ; Kaufman and Williams 2007 ).

In terms of gendered nationalism, scholars have examined the connection between gender and nation, particularly what happens to women in times of intrastate and interstate war (Enloe 1998 ; Nagel 1998 ; for cases see Jacobs et al. 2000 ; Moser and Clark 2001 ; Giles and Hyndman 2004a ; Alison 2007 ; Cockburn 2007 ). Leaders use feminine metaphors that make clear the threat to the nation, metaphors such as “motherland” (Mostov 2000 ). In large part this results from the connection between nationalism and militarism, as state-building is often the result of anticolonial or revolutionary conflicts (Nagel 1998 ). For example, Nagel notes the link between the modern form of Western masculinity and the emergence of modern nationalism in the nineteenth century . The state is “essentially a masculine institution” with hierarchical power and “authority structure” (women are considered subordinate to men). Moreover, there is a “culture of nationalism” that “is constructed to emphasize and resonate with masculine cultural themes. Terms like honour, patriotism, bravery and duty are hard to distinguish as either nationalistic or masculinist, since they seem so thoroughly tied both to the nation and to manliness” (Nagel 1998 :251–52). As citizen-warriors, men are the protectors of both the nation and women/children. Women also play a role in promoting the nation, through their roles as daughters, mothers, and wives of soldiers, which reinforces women's domestic identity (Pettman 1996 :50–1). In linking back to citizenship, feminist works on militarized violence look at the impact of ethnic nationalism on women in terms of their “legal and political status as citizens” (Giles and Hyndman 2004b :13–14). Invariably women are “dual citizens” in that they are considered a part of the nation/ethnic group or citizens of the state, but at the same time “there is often a separate body of regulations (legal and/or customary) that relate to them specifically as women” (Giles and Hyndman 2004b , citing Yuval-Davis 1994 :13–14). Women's legal rights of citizenship related to marriage and citizenship of their children, for example, become areas of contestation during times of conflict. Women's ability to access contraception and abortion are restricted, as leaders call for the need to produce more children for the nation (Enloe 1998 ; Peterson 1998 ; Kaufman and Williams 2007 ).

Moreover, in times of conflict, the link between nationalism, masculinity, and militarization becomes particularly acute for women as they are often the victims of rape and other sexual violence in the name of the nation/ethnic group (Pettman 1996 ; Enloe 1998 ; Peterson 1999 ; D'Costa 2003 ; Alison 2007 ; Tickner and Sjoberg 2007 ; Leiby 2009 ). For example, as Yugoslavia began to disintegrate in the early 1990s and the various ethnic groups began to clamor for power, reinforcing their ethnic/nationalist identity, women became targeted by virtue of their membership in a particular national/ethnic group. Women were systematically raped. They were victims of forced impregnation, all in the name of furthering the nationalist goals of the leaders (Alison 2007 ). The case of Yugoslavia is not unique; case studies by feminist researchers show clearly the pervasiveness of violence against women during wars and conflicts, such as Sudan and Sierra Leone (Macklin 2004 ; see also other chapters in Giles and Hyndman 2004a ; Coulter 2009 ).

Feminist research continues to address the ways in which nationalism is gendered, providing important contributions to the literature on nationalism. Scholars have also focused on the ways in which women are not only symbols of nationalist discourse in terms of the constructions of nation and gender, but are also able to “restructure national projects to incorporate feminist goals” (Vickers 2006 :95). The observation by feminist scholars that national projects can include feminist goals leads to the question of whether, in fact, nationalist and feminist goals are congruent, as will be addressed in the next section.

Feminism and Nationalism: Are They in Opposition?

Most scholarship on gendered nationalism demonstrates that women are negatively affected by nationalism, and that nationalism conflicts with feminism. These authors argue that women do not benefit in the long-run by their participation in nationalist movements – that when the movement succeeds in overthrowing the imperial or colonial power, women are relegated to their previous gendered roles as mothers and wives. Women do not make significant gains in their political and economic rights (Ranchod-Nilsson 2000a ; see also Werbner and Yuval-Davis, 1999 ; Herr 2003 ; Bouta et al. 2005 ; Disney 2008 ).

Yet, other scholars argue that feminism and nationalism are not necessarily in opposition, leading to a fruitful debate in the field (Cockburn 1998 ; Cockburn 2000 ). For example, Sylvia Walby critiques Yuval-Davis's work, arguing that “the extent to which women, or certain groups of women, support different, and sometimes competing, national and state projects” makes clear the need to analyze how and in what ways feminism and nationalism are in conflict ( 2000 :527). In fact, women participate in nationalist projects and “are not simply pawns or symbols of nations” (Walby 2000 :537; see also Pettman 1998 ; Vickers 2006 ). Vickers ( 2006 ) argues that because women organizing in national movements has led to positive outcomes, feminist scholarship needs “to identify situations in which women can organize to take advantage of restructurings in national projects to insert feminist values and goals making the nation-state more women-friendly” (Vickers 2006 :95). Delap et al. show how nationalism can be “a potential resource of feminism” as the historical accounts of nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries indicate that “feminism periodically became a resource of nationalism” ( 2006 :252). What case studies on nationalist conflicts make evident is that “women have shown a remarkable and long-lasting commitment to nationalism. The relationship between nationalism and feminism calls into question how one defines feminism and what it means to be a feminist. There is no ‘universal blueprint’ for feminism and, like nationalism, it can be imperialist as well as emancipatory” (Delap et al. 2006 :242–3). In answering the question about whether feminism and nationalism are compatible, Cockburn states: “It depends of course on what kind of nationalism and what kind of feminism you are talking about – for both of them are plural movements” ( 1998 :41).

Vickers’ work on sex/gender regimes as related to nationalism and the nation, for example, explores why some women endorse national projects. Moving beyond an analysis of Western states, she looks at non-Western states, such as the Philippines. She argues for the inclusion of “non-western women's experiences with anti-colonial and post-colonial national projects” in order to have a better feminist scholarship on nationhood and nation building ( 2006 :103). She writes that “most feminist scholars share the conviction that nations are gendered” and that “gender inequality was considered a constant and all nation-states viewed as patriarchal,” but argues that only recently has feminist scholarship recognized that the interaction between women and the nation is not the same across the board (Vickers 2006 :89). Rather, different women experience the nation and nationalism differently, much of which depends on whether the nation-state is able to provide security and citizenship to women. Vickers notes that “Where nation-states fail or attempts to establish them are prolonged […] chances for achieving any feminist goals are slim indeed. The key to productive feminist research is to identify factors that empower women to self-organize, open up space in national projects and insert women-friendly values” ( 2006 :103).

In addressing the question of whether or not nationalism is incompatible with feminism brings together both the role of women in nationalist movements/nationalism and the gendered representation of women in the nation. Scholars have noted that women's political participation in nationalist movements can open up space for political activism (or close it) (Ranchod-Nilsson and Tetreault 2000a ; see also West 1992 , 1997 ; Ryan 1997 ; Werbner and Yuval-Davis 1999 ; Cockburn 2007 ). Ranchod-Nilsson and Tetreault note that

we need to address the ways in which nationalist projects are historically and culturally embedded. While it may be true that all nations are gendered, we must be alert to the specific gender meanings invoked at particular times and places and the ways in which these meanings change over time. In other words, we must resist theorizing the gender dimensions of national identities in terms of concepts that are static or artificially universal: there is no single “woman's view” of the nation; there is no unambiguous “woman's side” in nationalist conflicts. (2000a:7)

Feminist research needs to focus on how and why gender and nation relations vary (Vickers and Vouloukos 2007 ). For example, Vickers and Vouloukos's ( 2007 ) work on Greek women's participation after the War of Independence shows that the public–private divide was not so clear, unlike most Western European states during periods of nation-state building, in which the public–private spheres were clearly demarcated, and affected women's participation in the nation-state-building process. The ethnic nationalism (an exclusive nationalism defined by ethnicity, rather than civic nationalism which is inclusive) experienced in Greece opened the space for the mobilization of women for the national project, within limits. They argue that “The idea that civic nationalism is good for women, while ethnic nationalism is not, was shown to be unfounded” ( 2007 :532). Moving beyond the assertion of gender scholars “that nations, nationalisms and nation-making processes are ‘gendered,’” Vickers and Vouloukos “argue that nation/alisms and nation-making are gendered if, and to the extent that . (1) they treat or affect women and men differently; (2) they mobilize men and women into national movements and processes differently; and (3) women and men benefit or suffer more from national policies” ( 2007 :511). Delap et al. ( 2006 ) examines African American's perception of nationalism as central to their feminist causes. And earlier, West ( 1992 ) argues for a feminist nationalism – that there is such a notion of nationalism that is feminist even if women do not support individual rights or women's role in the public sphere. Consequently, the case studies that feminist scholars examine and analyze show that, indeed, there are different understandings of “women's view” of the nation and women's roles in supporting (or opposing) nationalism and nationalist conflicts (Pettman 1996 , 1998 ; Cockburn 2000 ; Vickers 2006 ).

Conclusion: The Continuing State of Feminist Study of Nationalism, Citizenship, and Gender

Building on the earlier works and debates on citizenship and nationalism discussed in this essay, feminist scholarship continues to contribute to the literature in several ways (many, but not all, of which are listed in the references at the end of this essay). For example, in examining the state itself, Kim-Puri criticizes feminist scholars writing on nationalism and the nation for continuing to view the state as a monolithic entity. Instead, she argues that the state should be seen “as a set of social institutions and relations that vary across cultural contexts” (Kim-Puri 2005 :144). Further research, therefore, should include recognizing the political and cultural exclusions of women and others in society, as well as the inequalities that exist within states (Kim-Puri 2005 :153). Walby ( 2000 :528) proposes the notion of a gender regime, “a system of interrelated gender relations.” By looking more specifically within the state, she locates a gender regime in what she calls “six component structures or domains,” which include cultural institutions, household production, male violence, paid employment, policy, and sexuality. She points to two forms that gender regimes can take: a domestic gender regime, which is the private sphere, and a public gender regime, located in the public sphere. While women remain subordinated in the private sphere relative to the public sphere, and thus excluded, when they enter the public sphere there is still a form of subordination though not exclusion.

Relatedly, in the field of comparative politics, a recent issue of Perspectives on Politics ( March 2010 ), published by the American Political Science Association, was titled “Symposium: A Comparative Politics of Gender.” The authors of the articles opened up the state and looked at how women matter in terms of political representation, institutions, women's rights promoted by governments, and so forth. The overriding question posed for future research was to ask if there is such a thing as a “Comparative Politics of Gender” (CPG). In posing such a question, these scholars argue for continued research comparing women's experiences in various countries.

Another valuable area of research is on the intersectionality of class, race, gender and sexuality (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1983 , 1992 ; Walby 1992 ; Agnes 2002 ; Dhruvarajan and Vickers 2002 ; Giles and Hyndman 2004b ; Anderson 2005 ; Choo 2006 ; Cockburn 2007 ). Scholars have continued to analyze, as Cockburn notes, intersectionality and positionality in terms of “the way individuals and groups are placed in relation to each other in terms of significant dimensions of social difference” ( 2007 :7). These social dimensions of power are class, gender and race. Reflecting the importance of intersectionality as a continued direction for feminist research, Palgrave Macmillan recently announced a new series, The Politics of Intersectionality.

Scholars have also recently focused on “global citizenship.” Moving beyond an analysis of migration of people around the world and “the ubiquity of travel among social elites,” global citizenship attends to the authority and power of supranational institutions to confer rights as well as the enforcement of states’ obligations to adhere to those rights. The notion of a global citizenship, which can increase women's rights, leads to a question about the changing nature of state sovereignty, the hallmark of IR (Gordon-Zolov and Rogers 2010 :15–16). Relatedly, research connecting human rights and women's rights is also linked to the state and the impact of globalization, particularly the notion of transnational feminisms, global feminisms and feminist activism (Grewal 1999 ; Mohanty 2003 ; Hesford and Kozol 2005 ; Moghadam 2005 ; Ferree and Tripp 2006 ; Reilly 2007 ; see also Kaplan et al. 1999 ).

Importantly, one finds in the recent feminist scholarship a recurring theme: that the older works on citizenship and nationalism, particularly how these two concepts are gendered, are the building blocks of the continued prolific body of literature found in the feminist study of nationalism, citizenship and gender, whether examining international marriage laws, the public–private divide within states, migration as a challenge to state sovereignty, and so forth. As evidenced by the numerous books and articles published in journals such as Citizenship Studies , Nations and Nationalism , Ethnic and Racial Studies , Feminist Review , Women's Studies International Forum , and so forth, feminist scholars have contributed and continue to contribute to the growing body of literature.

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• Tickner, J.A. (2006) Feminism Meets International Relations: Some Methodological Issues. In B.A. Ackerly , M. Stern , and J. True (eds.) Feminist Methodologies for International Relations . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 19–41.
• Tinsman, H. (2004) Gender and Citizenship: A Review of Recent Works. Feminist Studies (30) (1), 200–10.
• Vickers, J. (2006) Bringing Nations In: Some Methodological and Conceptual Issues in Connecting Feminisms with Nationhood and Nationalisms. International Feminist Journal of Politics (8), 84–109.
• Vickers, J. , and Vouloukos, A. (2007) Changing Gender/Nation Relations: Women's Roles in Making and Restructuring the Greek Nation-State. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (13), 501–38.
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• Walby, S. (1992) Woman and Nation. International Journal of Comparative Sociology (33), 81–100.
• Walby, S. (1994) Is Citizenship Gendered? Sociology (28), 379–95.
• Walby, S. (2000) Gender, Nations and States in a Global Era. Nations and Nationalism (6) (4), 523–40.
• Waltz, K.N. (1979) Theory of International Politics . New York: Random House.
• Werbner, P. , and Yuval-Davis, N. (1999) Introduction: Women and the New Discourse of Citizenship. In N. Yuval-Davis and P. Werbner (eds.) Women, Citizenship, and Difference . London: Zed Books, pp. 1–38.
• Werbner, P. (1999) Political Motherhood and the Feminisation of Citizenship: Women's Activism and the Transformation of the Public Sphere. In N. Yuval-Davis and P. Werbner (eds.) Women, Citizenship and Difference . London: Zed Books, pp. 221–45.
• West, L.A. (1992) Feminist Nationalist Social Movements: Beyond Universalism and Towards a Gendered Cultural Relativism. Women's Studies International Forum (15) (5–6), 563–79.
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• Yuval-Davis, N. (1994). Women, Ethnicity and Empowerment. Feminist Psychology (4) (1), 179–97.
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• Yuval-Davis, N. (2004) Gender, the Nationalist Imagination, War, and Peace. In W. Giles and J. Hyndman (eds.) Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones . Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 170–89.
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Links to Digital Materials

Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. At http://un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/ , accessed May 20, 2011. The website of the Division for the Advancement of Women, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations provides information on the Convention itself, expert group meetings, and NGO participation, focused on the area of women's rights.

European Commission, “Citizenship.” At http://ec.europa.eu/citizenship/index_en.htm , accessed May 20, 2011. European Union website with publications on citizenship rights, including those of people in internationally mixed marriages.

Peacewomen.org. At www.peacewomen.org/ , accessed May 20, 2011. “The PeaceWomen Project [a project of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom] promotes the role of women in preventing conflict, and the equal and full participation of women in all efforts to create and maintain international peace and security. PeaceWomen facilitates monitoring of the UN system, information sharing and the enabling of meaningful dialogue for positive impact on women's lives in conflict and post-conflict environments.” The website provides information on the current status of women's citizenship in various countries around the world.

UN Women, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. At http://un.org/womenwatch/daw/daw/index.html . Created in July 2010, this UN office brings together four parts of the UN system, focused on gender equality and women's empowerment (Division for the Advancement of Women, International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, and United Nations Development Fund for Women). Documents available on the site focused on women, nationality, and citizenship include “Women 2000 and Beyond: Women, Nationality and Citizenship,” available at http://un.org/womenwatch/daw/public/jun03e.pdf , accessed May 20, 2011.

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For Love of Country: An Essay On Patriotism and Nationalism

Professor of Politics

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In scholarly literature and common language, patriotism is often conflated with nationalism, which is associated with an exclusive, intolerant, and irrational attachment to one's nation. As the history of Fascism and Nazism shows, patriotism understood as nationalism can have disastrous consequences. Nevertheless, this book argues that the language of patriotism must be distinguished from that of nationalism. While nationalism values the cultural, religious, and ethnic unity of a people, patriotism is the love of a people's common liberty, which gives us the strength to resist oppression by the selfish ambitions of particular individuals. In addition, patriotism is a rational love, since civic virtue is instrumental to the preservation of law and order, which is the prerequisite of our liberty. The question we must address is how to make our particular love of one's own country compatible with the universal principles of liberty and justice. Through a historical interpretation of patriotism from classical antiquity to contemporary debates, Viroli explores the possibility of patriotism without nationalism; i.e. one that emphasizes political unity based on the republican commitment to the common good, rather than cultural, religious, or ethnic homogeneity.

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Nationalism Essay for Students and Children

400 words essay on nationalism.

First of all, Nationalism is the concept of loyalty towards a nation. In Nationalism, this sentiment of loyalty must be present in every citizen. This ideology certainly has been present in humanity since time immemorial. Above all, it’s a concept that unites the people of a nation. It is also characterized by love for one’s nation. Nationalism is probably the most important factor in international politics.

Why Nationalism Is Important?

Nationalism happens because of common factors. The people of a nation share these common factors. These common factors are common language, history , culture, traditions, mentality, and territory. Thus a sense of belonging would certainly come in people. It would inevitably happen, whether you like it or not. Therefore, a feeling of unity and love would happen among national citizens. In this way, Nationalism gives strength to the people of the nation.

Nationalism has an inverse relationship with crime. It seems like crime rates are significantly lower in countries with strong Nationalism. This happens because Nationalism puts feelings of love towards fellow countrymen. Therefore, many people avoid committing a crime against their own countrymen. Similarly, corruption is also low in such countries. Individuals in whose heart is Nationalism, avoid corruption . This is because they feel guilty to harm their country.

Nationalism certainly increases the resolve of a nation to defend itself. There probably is a huge support for strengthening the military among nationalistic people. A strong military is certainly the best way of defending against foreign enemies. Countries with low Nationalism, probably don’t invest heavily in the military. This is because people with low Nationalism don’t favor strong militaries . Hence, these countries which don’t take Nationalism seriously are vulnerable.

Nationalism encourages environmental protection as well. People with high national pride would feel ashamed to pollute their nation. Therefore, such people would intentionally work for environment protection even without rules. In contrast, an individual with low Nationalism would throw garbage carelessly.

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Contemporary Nationalism

Nationalism took an ugly turn in the 20th century with the emergence of Fascism and Nazism. However, that was a negative side of Nationalism. Since then, many nations gave up the idea of aggressive Nationalism. This certainly did not mean that Nationalism in contemporary times got weak. People saw strong Nationalism in the United States and former USSR. There was a merger of Nationalism with economic ideologies like Capitalism and Socialism.

In the 21st century, there has been no shortage of Nationalism. The popular election of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is proof. Both these leaders strongly propagate Nationalism. Similarly, the election victory of other nationalistic leaders is more evidence.

Nationalism is a strong force in the world that is here to say. Nationalism has a negative side. However, this negative side certainly cannot undermine the significance of Nationalism. Without Nationalism, there would have been no advancement of Human Civilization.

500 Words Essay on Nationalism

Nationalism is an ideology which shows an individual’s love & devotion towards his nation.  It is actually people’s feelings for their nation as superior to all other nations. The concept of nationalism in India developed at the time of the Independence movement. This was the phase when people from all the areas/caste/religion etc collectively fought against British Raj for independence. Hence nationalism can be called as collective devotion of all the nationals towards their country.

Introduction of Nationalism in India:

The first world war (1919) had far-reaching consequences on the entire world. After the first world war, some major movements broke out in India like Satyagrah & Non-co-operation movement. This has sown the seeds of nationalism in Indians.  This era developed new social groups along with new modes of struggle. The major events like Jalianwala Bagh massacre & Khilafat movement had a strong impact on the people of India.

Thus, their collective struggle against colonialism brought them together and they have collectively developed a strong feeling of responsibility, accountability, love, and devotion for their country. This collective feeling of the Indian people was the start of the development of Nationalism.  Foundation of Indian National Congress in 1885 was the first organized expression of nationalism in India.

Basis of Rising of Nationalism in India

There could be several basis of rising of nationalism in India:

• The Britishers came to India as traders but slowly became rulers and started neglecting the interests of the Indians. This led to the feeling of oneness amongst Indians and hence slowly led to nationalism.
• India developed as a unified country in the 19 th & 20 th century due to well-structured governance system of Britishers. This has led to interlinking of the economic life of people, and hence nationalism.
• The spread of western education, especially the English language amongst educated Indians have helped the knowledgeable population of different linguistic origin to interact on a common platform and hence share their nationalist opinions.
• The researches by Indian and European scholars led to the rediscovery of the Indian past. The Indian scholars like Swami Vivekanand & European scholars like Max Mueller had done historical researched & had glorified India’s past in such a manner that Indian peoples developed a strong sense of nationalism & patriotism.
• The emergence of the press in the 19 th century has helped in the mobilization of people’s opinion thereby giving them a common platform to interact for independence motion and also to promote nationalism.
• Various reforms and social movements had helped Indian society to remove the social evils which were withholding the societal development and hence led to rejoining of society.
• The development of well-led railway network in India was a major boost in the transportation sector. Hence making it easy for the Indian population to connect with each other.
• The international events like the French revolution, Unification of Italy & Germany, etc.have  awakened the feelings of national consciousness amongst Indian people.

Though a lot of factors had led to rising of nationalism in India, the major role was played by First world war, Rowlatt act and Jaliawala bagh massacre. These major incidences have had a deep-down impact on the mind of Indians. These motivated them to fight against Britishers with a  strong feeling of Nationalism.  This feeling of nationalism was the main driving force for the independence struggle in India.

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Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points

By Alina Chan

Dr. Chan is a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, and a co-author of “Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.”

This article has been updated to reflect news developments.

On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci returned to the halls of Congress and testified before the House subcommittee investigating the Covid-19 pandemic. He was questioned about several topics related to the government’s handling of Covid-19, including how the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he directed until retiring in 2022, supported risky virus work at a Chinese institute whose research may have caused the pandemic.

For more than four years, reflexive partisan politics have derailed the search for the truth about a catastrophe that has touched us all. It has been estimated that at least 25 million people around the world have died because of Covid-19, with over a million of those deaths in the United States.

Although how the pandemic started has been hotly debated, a growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China. If so, it would be the most costly accident in the history of science.

Here’s what we now know:

1 The SARS-like virus that caused the pandemic emerged in Wuhan, the city where the world’s foremost research lab for SARS-like viruses is located.

• At the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a team of scientists had been hunting for SARS-like viruses for over a decade, led by Shi Zhengli.
• Their research showed that the viruses most similar to SARS‑CoV‑2, the virus that caused the pandemic, circulate in bats that live r oughly 1,000 miles away from Wuhan. Scientists from Dr. Shi’s team traveled repeatedly to Yunnan province to collect these viruses and had expanded their search to Southeast Asia. Bats in other parts of China have not been found to carry viruses that are as closely related to SARS-CoV-2.

The closest known relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were found in southwestern China and in Laos.

Large cities

Mine in Yunnan province

Cave in Laos

South China Sea

The closest known relatives to SARS-CoV-2

were found in southwestern China and in Laos.

philippines

The closest known relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were found

in southwestern China and Laos.

Sources: Sarah Temmam et al., Nature; SimpleMaps

Note: Cities shown have a population of at least 200,000.

There are hundreds of large cities in China and Southeast Asia.

There are hundreds of large cities in China

and Southeast Asia.

The pandemic started roughly 1,000 miles away, in Wuhan, home to the world’s foremost SARS-like virus research lab.

The pandemic started roughly 1,000 miles away,

in Wuhan, home to the world’s foremost SARS-like virus research lab.

The pandemic started roughly 1,000 miles away, in Wuhan,

home to the world’s foremost SARS-like virus research lab.

• Even at hot spots where these viruses exist naturally near the cave bats of southwestern China and Southeast Asia, the scientists argued, as recently as 2019 , that bat coronavirus spillover into humans is rare .
• When the Covid-19 outbreak was detected, Dr. Shi initially wondered if the novel coronavirus had come from her laboratory , saying she had never expected such an outbreak to occur in Wuhan.
• The SARS‑CoV‑2 virus is exceptionally contagious and can jump from species to species like wildfire . Yet it left no known trace of infection at its source or anywhere along what would have been a thousand-mile journey before emerging in Wuhan.

2 The year before the outbreak, the Wuhan institute, working with U.S. partners, had proposed creating viruses with SARS‑CoV‑2’s defining feature.

• Dr. Shi’s group was fascinated by how coronaviruses jump from species to species. To find viruses, they took samples from bats and other animals , as well as from sick people living near animals carrying these viruses or associated with the wildlife trade. Much of this work was conducted in partnership with the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based scientific organization that, since 2002, has been awarded over $80 million in federal funding to research the risks of emerging infectious diseases.
• The laboratory pursued risky research that resulted in viruses becoming more infectious : Coronaviruses were grown from samples from infected animals and genetically reconstructed and recombined to create new viruses unknown in nature. These new viruses were passed through cells from bats, pigs, primates and humans and were used to infect civets and humanized mice (mice modified with human genes). In essence, this process forced these viruses to adapt to new host species, and the viruses with mutations that allowed them to thrive emerged as victors.
• By 2019, Dr. Shi’s group had published a database describing more than 22,000 collected wildlife samples. But external access was shut off in the fall of 2019, and the database was not shared with American collaborators even after the pandemic started , when such a rich virus collection would have been most useful in tracking the origin of SARS‑CoV‑2. It remains unclear whether the Wuhan institute possessed a precursor of the pandemic virus.
• In 2021, The Intercept published a leaked 2018 grant proposal for a research project named Defuse , which had been written as a collaboration between EcoHealth, the Wuhan institute and Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina, who had been on the cutting edge of coronavirus research for years. The proposal described plans to create viruses strikingly similar to SARS‑CoV‑2.
• Coronaviruses bear their name because their surface is studded with protein spikes, like a spiky crown, which they use to enter animal cells. T he Defuse project proposed to search for and create SARS-like viruses carrying spikes with a unique feature: a furin cleavage site — the same feature that enhances SARS‑CoV‑2’s infectiousness in humans, making it capable of causing a pandemic. Defuse was never funded by the United States . However, in his testimony on Monday, Dr. Fauci explained that the Wuhan institute would not need to rely on U.S. funding to pursue research independently.

The Wuhan lab ran risky experiments to learn about how SARS-like viruses might infect humans.

1. Collect SARS-like viruses from bats and other wild animals, as well as from people exposed to them.

2. Identify high-risk viruses by screening for spike proteins that facilitate infection of human cells.

2. Identify high-risk viruses by screening for spike proteins that facilitate infection of

human cells.

In Defuse, the scientists proposed to add a furin cleavage site to the spike protein.

3. Create new coronaviruses by inserting spike proteins or other features that could make the viruses more infectious in humans.

4. Infect human cells, civets and humanized mice with the new coronaviruses, to determine how dangerous they might be.

• While it’s possible that the furin cleavage site could have evolved naturally (as seen in some distantly related coronaviruses), out of the hundreds of SARS-like viruses cataloged by scientists, SARS‑CoV‑2 is the only one known to possess a furin cleavage site in its spike. And the genetic data suggest that the virus had only recently gained the furin cleavage site before it started the pandemic.
• Ultimately, a never-before-seen SARS-like virus with a newly introduced furin cleavage site, matching the description in the Wuhan institute’s Defuse proposal, caused an outbreak in Wuhan less than two years after the proposal was drafted.
• When the Wuhan scientists published their seminal paper about Covid-19 as the pandemic roared to life in 2020, they did not mention the virus’s furin cleavage site — a feature they should have been on the lookout for, according to their own grant proposal, and a feature quickly recognized by other scientists.
• Worse still, as the pandemic raged, their American collaborators failed to publicly reveal the existence of the Defuse proposal. The president of EcoHealth, Peter Daszak, recently admitted to Congress that he doesn’t know about virus samples collected by the Wuhan institute after 2015 and never asked the lab’s scientists if they had started the work described in Defuse. In May, citing failures in EcoHealth’s monitoring of risky experiments conducted at the Wuhan lab, the Biden administration suspended all federal funding for the organization and Dr. Daszak, and initiated proceedings to bar them from receiving future grants. In his testimony on Monday, Dr. Fauci said that he supported the decision to suspend and bar EcoHealth.
• Separately, Dr. Baric described the competitive dynamic between his research group and the institute when he told Congress that the Wuhan scientists would probably not have shared their most interesting newly discovered viruses with him . Documents and email correspondence between the institute and Dr. Baric are still being withheld from the public while their release is fiercely contested in litigation.
• In the end, American partners very likely knew of only a fraction of the research done in Wuhan. According to U.S. intelligence sources, some of the institute’s virus research was classified or conducted with or on behalf of the Chinese military . In the congressional hearing on Monday, Dr. Fauci repeatedly acknowledged the lack of visibility into experiments conducted at the Wuhan institute, saying, “None of us can know everything that’s going on in China, or in Wuhan, or what have you. And that’s the reason why — I say today, and I’ve said at the T.I.,” referring to his transcribed interview with the subcommittee, “I keep an open mind as to what the origin is.”

3 The Wuhan lab pursued this type of work under low biosafety conditions that could not have contained an airborne virus as infectious as SARS‑CoV‑2.

• Labs working with live viruses generally operate at one of four biosafety levels (known in ascending order of stringency as BSL-1, 2, 3 and 4) that describe the work practices that are considered sufficiently safe depending on the characteristics of each pathogen. The Wuhan institute’s scientists worked with SARS-like viruses under inappropriately low biosafety conditions .

In the United States, virologists generally use stricter Biosafety Level 3 protocols when working with SARS-like viruses.

Biosafety cabinets prevent

viral particles from escaping.

Viral particles

Personal respirators provide

a second layer of defense against breathing in the virus.

DIRECT CONTACT

Gloves prevent skin contact.

Disposable wraparound

gowns cover much of the rest of the body.

Personal respirators provide a second layer of defense against breathing in the virus.

Disposable wraparound gowns

cover much of the rest of the body.

Note: ​​Biosafety levels are not internationally standardized, and some countries use more permissive protocols than others.

The Wuhan lab had been regularly working with SARS-like viruses under Biosafety Level 2 conditions, which could not prevent a highly infectious virus like SARS-CoV-2 from escaping.

Some work is done in the open air, and masks are not required.

Less protective equipment provides more opportunities

for contamination.

Some work is done in the open air,

and masks are not required.

Less protective equipment provides more opportunities for contamination.

• In one experiment, Dr. Shi’s group genetically engineered an unexpectedly deadly SARS-like virus (not closely related to SARS‑CoV‑2) that exhibited a 10,000-fold increase in the quantity of virus in the lungs and brains of humanized mice . Wuhan institute scientists handled these live viruses at low biosafet y levels , including BSL-2.
• Even the much more stringent containment at BSL-3 cannot fully prevent SARS‑CoV‑2 from escaping . Two years into the pandemic, the virus infected a scientist in a BSL-3 laboratory in Taiwan, which was, at the time, a zero-Covid country. The scientist had been vaccinated and was tested only after losing the sense of smell. By then, more than 100 close contacts had been exposed. Human error is a source of exposure even at the highest biosafety levels , and the risks are much greater for scientists working with infectious pathogens at low biosafety.
• An early draft of the Defuse proposal stated that the Wuhan lab would do their virus work at BSL-2 to make it “highly cost-effective.” Dr. Baric added a note to the draft highlighting the importance of using BSL-3 to contain SARS-like viruses that could infect human cells, writing that “U.S. researchers will likely freak out.” Years later, after SARS‑CoV‑2 had killed millions, Dr. Baric wrote to Dr. Daszak : “I have no doubt that they followed state determined rules and did the work under BSL-2. Yes China has the right to set their own policy. You believe this was appropriate containment if you want but don’t expect me to believe it. Moreover, don’t insult my intelligence by trying to feed me this load of BS.”
• SARS‑CoV‑2 is a stealthy virus that transmits effectively through the air, causes a range of symptoms similar to those of other common respiratory diseases and can be spread by infected people before symptoms even appear. If the virus had escaped from a BSL-2 laboratory in 2019, the leak most likely would have gone undetected until too late.
• One alarming detail — leaked to The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by current and former U.S. government officials — is that scientists on Dr. Shi’s team fell ill with Covid-like symptoms in the fall of 2019 . One of the scientists had been named in the Defuse proposal as the person in charge of virus discovery work. The scientists denied having been sick .

4 The hypothesis that Covid-19 came from an animal at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan is not supported by strong evidence.

• In December 2019, Chinese investigators assumed the outbreak had started at a centrally located market frequented by thousands of visitors daily. This bias in their search for early cases meant that cases unlinked to or located far away from the market would very likely have been missed. To make things worse, the Chinese authorities blocked the reporting of early cases not linked to the market and, claiming biosafety precautions, ordered the destruction of patient samples on January 3, 2020, making it nearly impossible to see the complete picture of the earliest Covid-19 cases. Information about dozens of early cases from November and December 2019 remains inaccessible.
• A pair of papers published in Science in 2022 made the best case for SARS‑CoV‑2 having emerged naturally from human-animal contact at the Wuhan market by focusing on a map of the early cases and asserting that the virus had jumped from animals into humans twice at the market in 2019. More recently, the two papers have been countered by other virologists and scientists who convincingly demonstrate that the available market evidence does not distinguish between a human superspreader event and a natural spillover at the market.
• Furthermore, the existing genetic and early case data show that all known Covid-19 cases probably stem from a single introduction of SARS‑CoV‑2 into people, and the outbreak at the Wuhan market probably happened after the virus had already been circulating in humans.

An analysis of SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary tree shows how the virus evolved as it started to spread through humans.

SARS-COV-2 Viruses closest

to bat coronaviruses

more mutations

Source: Lv et al., Virus Evolution (2024) , as reproduced by Jesse Bloom

The viruses that infected people linked to the market were most likely not the earliest form of the virus that started the pandemic.

• Not a single infected animal has ever been confirmed at the market or in its supply chain. Without good evidence that the pandemic started at the Huanan Seafood Market, the fact that the virus emerged in Wuhan points squarely at its unique SARS-like virus laboratory.

5 Key evidence that would be expected if the virus had emerged from the wildlife trade is still missing.

In previous outbreaks of coronaviruses, scientists were able to demonstrate natural origin by collecting multiple pieces of evidence linking infected humans to infected animals.

Infected animals

Earliest known

cases exposed to

live animals

Antibody evidence

of animals and

animal traders having

been infected

Ancestral variants

of the virus found in

Documented trade

of host animals

between the area

where bats carry

closely related viruses

and the outbreak site

Infected animals found

Earliest known cases exposed to live animals

Antibody evidence of animals and animal

traders having been infected

Ancestral variants of the virus found in animals

Documented trade of host animals

between the area where bats carry closely

related viruses and the outbreak site

For SARS-CoV-2, these same key pieces of evidence are still missing , more than four years after the virus emerged.

For SARS-CoV-2, these same key pieces of evidence are still missing ,

more than four years after the virus emerged.

• Despite the intense search trained on the animal trade and people linked to the market, investigators have not reported finding any animals infected with SARS‑CoV‑2 that had not been infected by humans. Yet, infected animal sources and other connective pieces of evidence were found for the earlier SARS and MERS outbreaks as quickly as within a few days, despite the less advanced viral forensic technologies of two decades ago.
• Even though Wuhan is the home base of virus hunters with world-leading expertise in tracking novel SARS-like viruses, investigators have either failed to collect or report key evidence that would be expected if Covid-19 emerged from the wildlife trade . For example, investigators have not determined that the earliest known cases had exposure to intermediate host animals before falling ill. No antibody evidence shows that animal traders in Wuhan are regularly exposed to SARS-like viruses, as would be expected in such situations.
• With today’s technology, scientists can detect how respiratory viruses — including SARS, MERS and the flu — circulate in animals while making repeated attempts to jump across species . Thankfully, these variants usually fail to transmit well after crossing over to a new species and tend to die off after a small number of infections. In contrast, virologists and other scientists agree that SARS‑CoV‑2 required little to no adaptation to spread rapidly in humans and other animals . The virus appears to have succeeded in causing a pandemic upon its only detected jump into humans.

The pandemic could have been caused by any of hundreds of virus species, at any of tens of thousands of wildlife markets, in any of thousands of cities, and in any year. But it was a SARS-like coronavirus with a unique furin cleavage site that emerged in Wuhan, less than two years after scientists, sometimes working under inadequate biosafety conditions, proposed collecting and creating viruses of that same design.

While several natural spillover scenarios remain plausible, and we still don’t know enough about the full extent of virus research conducted at the Wuhan institute by Dr. Shi’s team and other researchers, a laboratory accident is the most parsimonious explanation of how the pandemic began.

Given what we now know, investigators should follow their strongest leads and subpoena all exchanges between the Wuhan scientists and their international partners, including unpublished research proposals, manuscripts, data and commercial orders. In particular, exchanges from 2018 and 2019 — the critical two years before the emergence of Covid-19 — are very likely to be illuminating (and require no cooperation from the Chinese government to acquire), yet they remain beyond the public’s view more than four years after the pandemic began.

Whether the pandemic started on a lab bench or in a market stall, it is undeniable that U.S. federal funding helped to build an unprecedented collection of SARS-like viruses at the Wuhan institute, as well as contributing to research that enhanced them . Advocates and funders of the institute’s research, including Dr. Fauci, should cooperate with the investigation to help identify and close the loopholes that allowed such dangerous work to occur. The world must not continue to bear the intolerable risks of research with the potential to cause pandemics .

A successful investigation of the pandemic’s root cause would have the power to break a decades-long scientific impasse on pathogen research safety, determining how governments will spend billions of dollars to prevent future pandemics. A credible investigation would also deter future acts of negligence and deceit by demonstrating that it is indeed possible to be held accountable for causing a viral pandemic. Last but not least, people of all nations need to see their leaders — and especially, their scientists — heading the charge to find out what caused this world-shaking event. Restoring public trust in science and government leadership requires it.

A thorough investigation by the U.S. government could unearth more evidence while spurring whistleblowers to find their courage and seek their moment of opportunity. It would also show the world that U.S. leaders and scientists are not afraid of what the truth behind the pandemic may be.

More on how the pandemic may have started

Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling.

Even if the coronavirus did not emerge from a lab, the groundwork for a potential disaster had been laid for years, and learning its lessons is essential to preventing others.

By Zeynep Tufekci

Why Does Bad Science on Covid’s Origin Get Hyped?

If the raccoon dog was a smoking gun, it fired blanks.

By David Wallace-Wells

A Plea for Making Virus Research Safer

A way forward for lab safety.

By Jesse Bloom

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Alina Chan ( @ayjchan ) is a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, and a co-author of “ Viral : The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.” She was a member of the Pathogens Project , which the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists organized to generate new thinking on responsible, high-risk pathogen research.

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