essay on nationalism theory

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Nationalism

The term “nationalism” is generally used to describe two phenomena: (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) self-determination. (1) raises questions about the concept of nation (or national identity), which is often defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and while an individual’s membership in a nation is often regarded as involuntary, it is sometimes regarded as 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.

It is traditional, therefore, to distinguish nations from states — whereas a nation often consists of an ethnic or cultural community, a state is a political entity with a high degree of sovereignty. While many states are nations in some sense, there are many nations which are not fully sovereign states. As an example, the Native American Iroquois constitute a nation but not a state, since they do not possess the requisite political authority over their internal or external affairs. If the members of the Iroquois nation were to strive to form a sovereign state in the effort to preserve their identity as a people, they would be exhibiting a state-focused nationalism.

Nationalism has long been ignored as a topic in political philosophy, written off as a relic from bygone times. It has only recently come into the focus of philosophical debate, partly in consequence of rather spectacular and troubling nationalist clashes, like those in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet republics. The surge of nationalism usually presents a morally ambivalent and for this reason often fascinating picture. “National awakenings” and struggles for political independence are often both heroic and inhumanly cruel; the formation of a recognizably national state often responds to deep popular sentiment, but can and does sometimes bring in its wake inhuman consequences, including violent expulsion and “cleansing” of non-nationals, all the way 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 having to do with the treatment of ethnic and cultural differences within a democratic polity, which are arguably among the most pressing problems of contemporary political theory.

In recent years the focus of the debate about nationalism has shifted towards issues in international justice, probably in response to changes on the international scene: bloody nationalist wars such as those in the former Yugoslavia have become less conspicuous, whereas the issues of terrorism, of “clash of civilizations” and of hegemony in the international order have come to occupy public attention. One important link with earlier debates is provided by the contrast between views of international justice based on the predominance of sovereign nation-states and more cosmopolitan views, that either insist upon limiting national sovereignty, or even envisage its disappearance.

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.

1.1 The Basic Concept of Nationalism

1.2 the concept of a nation, 2.1 concepts of nationalism: strict and wide, 2.2 moral claims: the centrality of nation, 3.1 classical and liberal nationalisms, 3.2 arguments in favor of nationalism: the deep need for community, 3.3 arguments in favor of nationalism: issues of justice, 4. conclusion, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries, 1. what is a nation.

Although the term “nationalism” has a variety of meanings, it centrally encompasses the two phenomena noted at the outset: (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 1998-99: 9.) Each of these aspects requires elaboration. (1) raises questions about the concept of 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 is required by nationalists 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 (see Berlin 1979, Smith 1991, Levy 2000, and the discussion in Gans 2003).

(2) raises questions about whether sovereignty entails the acquisition of full statehood with complete authority for domestic and international affairs, or whether something less than statehood would suffice. Although sovereignty is often taken to mean full statehood (Gellner 1983, ch. 1), more recently possible exceptions have been recognized (Miller 1992: 87, and Miller 2000).

Despite these definitional worries, there is a fair amount of agreement about what is historically the most typical, paradigmatic form of nationalism. It is the one which features the supremacy of the nation's claims over other claims to individual allegiance and which features full sovereignty as the persistent aim of its political program. The state as political unit is seen by nationalists as centrally ‘belonging’ to one ethno-cultural group and as charged with protecting and promulgating its traditions. This form is exemplified by the classical, “revivalist” nationalism, that was most prominent in the 19th century in Europe and Latin America. This classical nationalism later spread across the world and in present days still marks many contemporary nationalisms.

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 the issue into its components, 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. (1a) What is a nation and national identity? (1b) What is it to belong to a nation? (1c) What is the nature of pro-national attitudes? (1d) Is membership in a nation voluntary or non-voluntary? Second, the normative ones: (1e) Is the attitude of caring about national identity always appropriate? (1f) How much should one care?

In this section the descriptive questions are to be discussed, 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 the national interest, 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 been elaborating theories of ethnicity, culture, nation and state. Their opponents have in their turn challenged these elaborations. Now, some presuppositions about ethnic groups and nations are essential for the nationalist, others are theoretical elaborations designed to support the essential ones. The former concern the definition and status of the target or social group, the beneficiary of the nationalist program, variously called “nation,” “ethno-nation” or “ethnic-group.” 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 put into a separate category under the title “patriotism,” or “constitutional patriotism” (Habermas 1996, see the discussion in Markell, P. (2000)). This leaves two extreme options and a lot of intermediate positions. The first extreme option has been put forward by a small but distinguished band of theorists, including E. Renan (1882) and M. Weber (1970); for a recent defense see Brubaker (2004). 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 might be “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, so that in the classical view an 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 (a very prominent proponent of the distinction is Hans Kohn 1965). Philosophical discussions of nationalism tend to concern its ethno-cultural variants only and this practice will be followed here. A group aspiring to nationhood on this basis will be called an ‘ethno-nation’ in order to underscore its ethno-cultural rather than purely civic underpinnings. For the ethno-cultural nationalist it is one's ethno-cultural background which determines one's membership in the community. One cannot chose to be a member; instead, membership depends on the accident of origin and early socialization. However, commonality of origin has turned out to be mythical for most contemporary candidate groups: ethnic groups have been mixing for millennia.

Therefore, sophisticated pro-nationalists tend to stress cultural membership only and to speak of “nationality,” omitting the “ethno-” part (Miller 1992 and 2000, Tamir 1993, and Gans 2003). Michel Seymour in his 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 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, nation is a somewhat mixed, both ethno-cultural and civic category, but still closer to the purely ethno-cultural than to the purely civic extreme.

The wider descriptive underpinnings of nationalist claims have varied over the last two centuries. The early German elaborations talk about “the spirit of a people,” while somewhat later ones, mainly of French extraction, talk about “collective mentality,” ascribing to it specific and significant causal powers. A later descendent of this notion is the idea of a “national character” peculiar to each nation, which partly survives today under the guise of national “forms of life” and of feeling (Margalit 1997, see below). For almost a century, up to the end of the Second World War, it was customary to link nationalist views to organic metaphors of society. Isaiah Berlin, writing as late as the early seventies, proposed within his definition that nationalism consists of the conviction that people belong to a particular human group and that “...the characters of the individuals who compose the group are shaped by, and cannot be understood apart from, those of the group ...” (first published in 1972, reprinted in Berlin 1979: 341). The nationalist claims, according to Berlin, that “the pattern of life in a society is similar to that of a biological organism” ( ibid .) and that the needs of this ‘organism’ determine the supreme goal for all of its members. Most contemporary defenders of nationalism, especially philosophers, avoid such language. The organic metaphor and talk about character have been replaced by one master metaphor: that of national identity. It is centered upon cultural membership and used both for the identity of a group and for the socially based identity of its members, e.g., the national identity of George in so far as he is English or British. Various authors unpack the metaphor in various ways: some stress involuntary membership in the community, others the strength with which one identifies with the community, yet others link it to the personal identity of each member of the community. Addressing these issues, the nationally minded philosophers, like Alasdair MacIntyre (1994), Charles Taylor (1989), M. Seymour and others have significantly contributed to establishing important topics such as community, membership, tradition and social identity within the contemporary philosophical debate.

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. The first can be called “primordialist” views. According to them, actual ethno-cultural nations have either existed “since times immemorial” (an extreme, somewhat caricaturistic version, corresponding to nineteenth century nationalist rhetoric), or at least for a long time during the pre-modern period (Hastings 1997: see the discussion of his views in Nations and Nationalism , v. 9, 2003). There is a very popular moderate version of this view championed by Anthony Smith (1991 and 2001) under the name “ethnosymbolism.” According to it, nations are like artichokes, in that they have a lot of “unimportant leaves” that can be chewed up one by one, but also have a heart, which remains after the leaves have been eaten (the metaphor stems from Stanley Hoffmann: for details and sources see a recent debate between Smith (2003) and Özkirimli (2003)). The second are the modernist views, placing the origin of nations in modern times. They can be further classified according to their answer to a further question: how real is the ethno-cultural nation? The modernist realist view is that nations are real but distinctly modern creations, instrumental in the genesis of capitalism (Gellner 1983, Hobsbawn 1990, and Breuilly 2001). On the same side of the fence but more in a radical direction one finds anti-realist views. According to one such view nations are merely “imagined” but somehow still powerful entities; what is meant is that belief in them holds sway over the believers (Anderson 1965). The extreme anti-realist view claims that they are pure “constructions” (see Walker 2001, for an overview and literature). These divergent views seem to support rather divergent moral claims about nations. For an overview of nationalism in political theory see Vincent (2001).

Indeed, older authors — from great thinkers like Herder and Otto Bauer, to the propagandists who followed their footsteps — have been at 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. (See, for instance, MacCormick 1982, Miller 1992 and 2000, and Tamir 1993.) 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), 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 at least in some sense rational. Authors in the first camp 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) sees this irrationality as being spontaneous. Michael Walzer(2002) has recently offered a sympathetic account of nationalist passion . Authors relying upon the Marxist tradition offer various deeper explanations. To mention one, the French structuralist Étienne Balibar sees it as a result of “production” of ideology effectuated by mechanisms which have nothing to do with spontaneous credulity of individuals, but with impersonal, structural social factors (Balibar and Wallerstein 1992).

Consider now the other camp, those who see nationalist sentiments as being rational, at least in a very wide sense. Some authors claim that it is often rational for individuals to become nationalists (Hardin 1985). Consider the two sides of the nationalist coin. First, identification and cohesion within a ethno-national group has to do with inter-group cooperation, and cooperation is easier for those who are part of the same ethno-national group. To take an example of ethnic ties in a multiethnic state, a Vietnamese newcomer to the States will do well to rely on his co-nationals: common language, customs and expectations might help him a lot in finding his way in new surroundings. Once the ties are established and he has become part of a network, it is rational to go on cooperating and ethnic sentiment does secure the trust and the firm bond needed for smooth cooperation. A further issue is when it is rational to switch sides; to stay with our example, when does it become profitable for our Vietnamese to develop an all-American patriotism? This has received a detailed elaboration in David Laitin (1998, summarized in 2001; applied to language rights in Laitin and Reich 2004), who uses material from the former Soviet Union. The other side of the nationalist coin has to do with conflict between various ethno-nations. It concerns non-cooperation with the outsiders, which can go very far indeed. Can one rationally explain the extremes of ethno-national conflict? Authors like Russell Hardin propose to do it in terms of a general view of when hostile behavior is rational: most typically, if you have no reason to trust someone, it is reasonable to take precautions against him. If both sides take precautions, however, each will tend to see the other as being seriously 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 so-called Prisoner’s Dilemma.) Now, it is relatively easy to spot the circumstances in which this general pattern applies to national solidarities and conflicts. The line of thought just sketched is often called “rational choice approach.” It has enabled the application of conceptual tools from game-theoretic and economic theories of cooperative and non-cooperative behavior to an explanation of ethno-nationalism.

It is worth mentioning, however, that the individualist rational-choice approach, centered upon personal rationality, has serious competitors. A tradition in social psychology, initiated by Henri Tajfel (1981), shows that individuals may identify with a randomly selected group, even when membership in the group brings no tangible rewards. Does rationality of any kind underlie this tendency to identification? Some authors (Sober and Wilson 1998) answer in the affirmative. They propose that it is a non-personal, evolutionary rationality: individuals who develop a sentiment of identification and sense of belonging end up better off in the evolutionary race; hence we have inherited such propensities. The initial sentiments were reserved for one's own kin, thus supporting the spreading of one’s own genes. Cultural evolution has taken over the mechanisms of identification that initially developed within biological evolution. As a result, we project the sentiment originally reserved for kinship to our cultural group. Further, detailed explanations from such socio-biological perspective differ greatly among themselves and constitute a wide and rather promising research program (see an overview in Goetze 2001).

Finally, as for question (1d), the nation is typically seen as essentially a non-voluntary community to which one belongs by birth and early nurture through which the belonging is somehow enhanced and perhaps taken to a higher level, becoming more conscious and more complete by one's own endorsement. Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz express the common view when they write about belonging to a nation: “Qualification for membership is usually determined by non-voluntary criteria. One cannot choose to belong. One belongs because of who one is” (Margalit and Raz 1990: 447). And of course, this belonging brings crucial benefits: “Belonging to a national form of life means being within a frame that offers meaning to people's choice between alternatives, thus enabling them to acquire an identity” (Margalit 1997: 83). Why is national belonging taken to be involuntary? Very often it is described starting from linguistic belonging: a child does not decide which language will become her or his mother tongue, and it is often pointed out that one's mother tongue is the most important depository of concepts, knowledge, social and cultural significance. All these are embedded in the language and do not exist without it. Early socialization is seen as socialization into a specific culture, and very often the culture is just assumed to be a national one. “There are people who express themselves ‘Frenchly,’ while others have forms of life that are expressed ‘Koreanly’ or ‘Icelandicly,’” writes Margalit (1997: 80). The resulting belonging is then to a large extent non-voluntary. (There are exceptions to this basically non-voluntaristic view, for instance, theoretical nationalists who accept voluntary changes of nationality. (See also Ernst Renan's (1882: 19) famous definition of a nation as constituted by an “everyday plebiscite.”)

2. Varieties of Nationalism

We began by pointing out 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, the usual focus of a national struggle for independence. It raises an important issue, that I will call (2a): Does political sovereignty require statehood or something weaker? 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: (2b) What actions are morally permitted to achieve sovereignty and to maintain it? and (2c) Under what conditions is it morally permitted to take actions of this kind?

Consider first the classical nationalist answer to (2a). Political sovereignty requires a state “rightfully owned” by the ethno-nation (Oldenquist 1997, who credits the expression to the writer Czeslaw Milosz). Those who develop 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. So, once the state is there, further options are opened for nationalists. They sometimes promote claims for its expansion (even at the cost of wars) and sometimes opt for isolationist policies. The expansion is often justified by appeal to the unfinished business of bringing literally all members of the nation under one state, sometimes by the interest of the nation in gaining more territory and resources. As for maintenance of sovereignty by peaceful and merely ideological means, political nationalism is closely tied to nationalism in culture. The latter insists upon the preservation and transmission of a given culture, more accurately, of recognizably ethno-national traits of the culture in its pure form, dedicating artistic creation, education and research to this goal. Of course, the ethno-national traits can be actual or invented, partly or fully so. Again, in the classical variant the relevant norm claims that one has both a right and an obligation (“a sacred duty”) to promote such a tradition. Its force is that of a trump that wins over other interests and even over rights (which is often needed in order to carry on national independence struggle). In consequence, classical nationalism has something to say about the level of attitudes as well: as for (1e) it sees caring for one's nation a fundamental duty of each of its members and is prone to give to it, in its answer to (1f), an unlimited scope. Let me list its most important features for future reference:

Classical nationalism is the political program that sees 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 the ethno-nation, it claims that a primary duty of each member is to abide in cultural matters by one's recognizably ethno-national culture.

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 universalist or simply not recognizably national might, and will sometimes, fall prey to such nationalist enthusiasms. Classical nationalism in everyday life puts various additional demands on individuals, from buying more expensive domestically produced goods in preference to the cheaper imported ones, to procreating as many future members of the nation as one can manage. (See Yuval-Davies 1997.)

Besides classical nationalism (and its more radical extremist cousins), various moderate views are also nowadays 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. Let me characterize these briefly:

Nationalism in a 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 special obligations and permissions (for individual members of the nation and for any involved third parties, individual or collective) from this ascribed value.

Nationalisms, in this larger sense, can vary somewhat in their conceptions of nation (which are often left implicit in their discourse), with respect to the ground and degree of its value and in the scope of claims and of prescribed obligations. (The term can also be applied to other cases not covered by classical nationalism, for instance, the hypothetical pre-state political forms that an ethnic identity might take). Moderate nationalism is a universalizing nationalism in the wider sense which is less demanding than classical nationalism. It sometimes goes under the name of “patriotism.” (A different usage, again, reserves “patriotism” for valuing of civic community and loyalty to one's state, in contrast to nationalism, centered around ethno-cultural communities). 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 here to as “theoretical nationalist,” the adjective serving to distinguish such views from the less sophisticated and more practical nationalist discourse. The central theoretical nationalist evaluative claims can usefully be put on the map of possible positions within political theory in the following somewhat simplified and schematic way.

Nationalist claims featuring the centrality of nation for political action provide an answer to two crucial general questions. First, is there one kind of large social group (smaller than the whole of mankind) that is morally of central importance or not? The nationalist answer is that there is just one, namely, the nation. When an ultimate choice is to be made, nation has priority. (This answer is implied by rather standard definitions of nationalism offered by Berlin, discussed in Section 1, and Smith 2001) Second, what is the ground of obligation that the individual has to the morally central group? Is it 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, the pro-nationalist normative tastes fit nicely with the communitarian stance in general: most pro-nationalist philosophers are communitarians who choose 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). However, some recent writers, e.g., Will Kymlicka (2001), who describe themselves as liberal nationalists, reject the communitarian underpinning.

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.

The claims thus recommend various courses of action, centrally those meant to secure and sustain the political organization — preferably a state — for the given ethno-cultural national community (thereby making more specific the answers to our normative questions (1e, 1f, 2b, 2c)). Further, they enjoin the members of the community to promulgate recognizably 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. For starters, let us return to the claims concerning the furthering of the national state and culture. These are proposed by the nationalist as a guide and a norm of conduct. Philosophically the 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 having 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 in regard to all parties concerned, including the individual members of the ethno-nation. A weaker, but still quite demanding version speaks only of moral obligation (“sacred duty”). A more liberal version is satisfied with a claim-right to having a state that would be “rightfully owned” by the ethno-nation.
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, those of individual or group interests, or rights. Variations in comparative strength of the claims take place on a continuum between two extremes. At one rather unpalatable extreme the nation-focused claims are seen as trumps that take precedence over any other claims, even over human rights. Further towards the center is the classical nationalism that gives nation-centered claims precedence over individual interest and many needs (including pragmatic collective utility), but not necessarily over general human rights. (See, for example, MacIntyre 1994 and Oldenquist 1997.) On the opposite end, which is mild, humane and liberal, the central nationalist claims are accorded prima facie status only (see Tamir 1993 and Gans 2003).

Universalizing nationalism is the political program that claims that every ethno-nation should have its state, which it should rightfully own and whose interests 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 does it 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).

I have dubbed the most difficult and indeed chauvinistic sub-case of particularism, i.e. (B), “invidious” since it explicitly denies the privilege of having a state to some peoples. Thomas Pogge (1997) proposes a further division of (B) into the “high” stance, which denies it to some types of groups, and the “low” one, which denies it to some particular groups. Serious theoretical nationalists usually defend only the universalist variety, whereas the nationalist-in-the-street most often the egoistic indeterminate one (“Some nations should have a state, above all mine!”). Classical nationalism comes both in particularistic and universalistic varieties.

Although the three dimensions of variation — internal strength, comparative strength and scope — are logically independent, they are psychologically and politically intertwined. People who are radical in one respect on the nationality issue tend also to be radical in other respects. In other words, attitudes tend to cluster together in stable clusters, so that extreme (or moderate) attitudes on one dimension psychologically and politically belong with extreme (or moderate) ones on others. The hybrids of extreme attitude on one dimension with moderate on the others are psychologically and socially unstable.

The nationalist picture of morality has been traditionally quite close to the dominant view in theory of international relations, called “realism.” To put the point of classical realism starkly, morality ends at the boundaries of the nation-state; beyond the boundaries there is nothing but anarchy. The view is explicit in Friederich Meinecke (1965: Introduction) and Raymond Aron (1962), and it is very close to the surface in Hans Morgenthau (1946). It nicely complements the main classical nationalist claim 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

Let us return to our initial normative question, centered around (1) attitudes and (2) actions. Is national partiality justified and to what extent? What actions are appropriate for bringing sovereignty about? In particular, are ethno-national states and institutionally protected (ethno-)national cultures goods independent from the individual will of the 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? (For a recent debate on partiality in general, see Chatterjee and Smith 2003.)

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 misfortunes of Kurds — makes one spontaneously endorse the idea that having their own state would have solved the worst problems. Still, there are good reasons to examine the nationalist claims more carefully. The most general reason is that it should first be shown that the political form of a nation state has some value as such, that a national community has a particular, or even preeminent 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 culture and creativity. 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 interfere, and often do interfere, with individuals’ right to autonomy. Also, if these duties are construed very strictly they can interfere with other individual rights, e.g., the right to privacy. Many feminist authors have noted that a suggestion typically offered by the nationalist, namely that women have a moral obligation to give birth to new members of the nation and to nurture them for the sake of the nation, clashes with both the autonomy and the privacy of these women (Yuval-Davis 1997 and Okin 1999, 2002 and 2005). Another endangered value is diversity within the ethno-national community, which can also be thwarted by the homogeneity of a central national culture.

Nation-oriented duties also interfere with the value of unconstrained creativity, e.g., telling writers or musicians or philosophers that they have a special duty to promote national heritage does interfere with the freedom of creation. The question here is not whether these individuals have the right to promote their national heritage, but whether they have a duty to do so.

In between these two sets of endangered values, the autonomy-centered and creativity-centered ones, are the values that seem to arise from ordinary needs of people living under ordinary circumstances (Barry 2001; and Barry 2003 in the Other Internet Resources section below). In many modern states, citizens of different ethnic backgrounds live together and very often value this kind of life. This very fact of cohabitation seems to be a good that should be upheld. Nationalism does not tend to foster this kind of multiculturalism and pluralism, judging from both theory (especially the classical nationalist one) and experience. But the problems get worse. In practice, a widespread variant of nationalism is the invidious particularistic form claiming rights for one's own people and denying them to others, for reasons that seem to be far from accidental. The source of the problem is the competition for scarce resources: as Ernst Gellner (1983) has famously pointed out, there is too little territory for all candidate ethnic groups to have a state and the same goes for other goods demanded by nationalists for the exclusive use of their co-nationals. According to some authors (McCabe 1997) the invidious variant is more coherent than any other form of nationalism: if one values highly one's own ethnic group the simplest way is to value it tout court . If one definitely prefers one's own culture in all respects to any foreign one, it is a waste of time and attention to bother about others. The universalist, non-invidious variant introduces enormous psychological and political complications. These arise from a tension between spontaneous attachment to one's own community and the demand to regard all communities with an equal eye. This tension might make the humane, non-invidious position psychologically unstable and difficult to uphold in situations of conflict and crisis. This psychological weakness renders it politically less efficient.

The philosophical authors sympathetic to nationalism are aware of the evils that historical nationalism has produced and usually distance themselves from these. 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: 87 and Miller 2000). Such thoughtful pro-nationalist writers have put forward several lines of thought in defense of nationalism, thereby initiating an ongoing philosophical dialogue between the proponents and the opponents of the claim (see the anthologies McKim and McMahan 1997, Couture, Nielsen, and Seymour 1998, and Miscevic 2000). In order to help the reader find his or her way through the involved debate, we shall briefly summarize the considerations which are open to the ethno-nationalist to defend his or her case. (Compare the useful overview in Lichtenberg 1997.) The considerations and lines of thought built upon them can be used to defend very different varieties of nationalism, from radical to very moderate ones.

It is important to offer a warning concerning the key assumptions and premises which figure in each of the lines of thought summarized below, namely, that the assumptions often live an independent life in the philosophical literature. Some of them figure in the proposed defenses of various traditional views which have little to do with the concept of a nation in particular.

For brevity, I shall reduce each line of thought to a brief argument; the actual debate is, however, more involved than one can represent in a sketch. I shall indicate, in brackets, some prominent lines of criticism that have been put forward in the debate. (These are discussed in greater detail in Miscevic 2001.) The main arguments in favor of nationalism, which purport to establish its fundamental claims about state and culture, will be divided into two sets. The first set of arguments defends the claim that national communities have a high value, often seen 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 ‘philosophical’ (or ‘comprehensive’) and encompasses arguments from the requirements of justice, rather independent from substantial assumptions about culture and cultural values.

The first set will be presented here in more detail, since it has formed the center of the debate. It depicts the community as the deep source of value or as the unique transmission device that connects the members to some important values. In this sense, the arguments from this set are communitarian in a particularly “deep” sense, since they are grounded in basic features of the human condition. Here is a characterization.

The deep communitarian perspective is a theoretical perspective on political issues (here, to nationalism), that justifies a given political arrangement (here, a nation-state) by appeal to deep philosophical assumptions about human nature, language, community ties and identity (in a deeper, philosophical sense).

The general form of deep communitarian arguments is the following. 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. Unfortunately, this crucial claim is rarely defended in detail in the literature. But here is a sample from Margalit, whose last sentence has been already quoted above:

The idea is that people make use of different styles to express their humanity. The styles are generally determined by the communities to which they belong. There are people who express themselves ‘Frenchly’, while others have forms of life that are expressed ‘Koreanly’ or … ‘Icelandicly’ (Margalit 1997: 80).

Then follows the statist conclusion: in order that such a community should 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, in respect to any third party and to its own members, to have 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 liberally minded 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 its members. A liberal nationalist might accept that these may not be the central values of political life, but claim that they are values nevertheless. Moreover, the diametrically opposite views, pure individualism and cosmopolitanism, do seem arid and abstract and seem unmotivated by comparison. By cosmopolitanism I shall understand a moral and political doctrine of the following sort:

Cosmopolitanism is the view 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).

The critics of cosmopolitanism sometimes argue that these two claims are incoherent since human beings generally thrive best under some global institutional arrangement (like ours) that concentrates power and authority at the level of states.

Confronted with opposing forces of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, many philosophers opt for a mixture of liberalism-cosmopolitanism and patriotism-nationalism. In his writings Benjamin Barber glorifies “a remarkable mixture of cosmopolitanism and parochialism” which, in his view characterizes American national identity (in Cohen 1996: 31). Charles Taylor claims that “we have no choice but to be cosmopolitan and patriots” ( ibid : 121). Hilary Putnam proposes loyalty to what is best in the multiple traditions that each of us participates in; apparently a middle way between a narrow-minded patriotism and a too abstract cosmopolitanism ( ibid : 114). The compromise has been foreshadowed by Berlin (1979) and Taylor (1989 and 1993), and its various versions worked out in considerable detail by authors such as Yael Tamir (1993), David Miller (1995 and 2000), Kai Nielsen (1998), Michel Seymour (2000) and Chaim Gans (2003). In recent years it has occupied the center stage of the debate. 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 the main weakenings of classical ethno-nationalism that the 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 and automatically amount to the right to a state, but rather to the right to a certain level of cultural autonomy. Third, ethno-nationalism is subordinate to civic patriotism, and this 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 in spite of their falsity. Finally, any legitimacy that ethno-national claims may have is to be derived from choices that concerned individuals should be free to make.

Consider now the particular arguments from the first set. The first argument depends on assumptions that also appear in the subsequent ones, only that it ascribes to the community an intrinsic value, while the following ones point more towards a nation's instrumental value derived from the value of individual flourishing, moral understanding, firm identity and the like.

(1) 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 those who don’t share the culture. The community thereby becomes a network of morally connected agents, i.e., a moral community, with special, very strong ties of obligation. A prominent obligation of each individual concerns the underlying traits of the ethnic community, above all language and customs: they ought to be cherished, protected, preserved and reinforced. The general assumption that moral obligations increase with cultural proximity is often criticized as problematic. Moreover, even if we grant this general assumption in theory, it breaks down in practice. Nationalist activism is most often turned against close (and substantially similar) neighbors rather than against distant strangers, so that in many important contexts the appeal to proximity will not work. It might however retain its potential force against culturally distant groups.

(2) 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 one'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 the “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. This result is still compatible with the argument from flourishing, if ‘concepts and values’ are not taken to be specifically national, as communitarian nationalists (MacIntyre 1994 and Margalit 1997) have claimed.

(3) The Argument from Identity . Communitarian philosophers emphasize nurture over nature as the principal force determining our identity as persons — we come to be the persons we are because of the social settings and contexts in which we mature. The 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). For example, Nielsen writes:

We are, to put it crudely, lost if we cannot identify ourselves with some part of an objective social reality: a nation, though not necessarily a state, with its distinctive traditions. What we find in people — and as deeply embedded as the need to develop their talents — is the need not only to be able to say what they can do but to say who they are. This is found, not created, and is found in the identification with others in a shared culture based on nationality or race or religion or some slice or amalgam thereof. ... Under modern conditions, this securing and nourishing of a national consciousness can only be achieved with a nation-state that corresponds to that national consciousness (1993: 32).

Given that an individual's morality depends upon their having a mature and stable personal identity, the communal conditions that foster the development of such personal identity have to be preserved and encouraged. The philosophical nationalists claim that the national format is the right format for preserving and encouraging such identity-providing communities. Therefore, communal life should be organized around particular national cultures. The classical nationalist proposes that cultures should be given their states, while the liberal nationalist proposes that cultures should get at least some form of political protection.

(4) 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, to those who have wholeheartedly endorsed the norms and standards of the given tradition. 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. (I note in fairness that Taylor himself is ambivalent about the national format of morality.) An often noticed problem with this line of thought is that particular nations do not each have a special morality of their own. Also, the detailed, “thick” morality may vary more across other divisions, such as class or gender divisions, than across ethno-national groups.

(5) The Argument from Diversity . Each national culture contributes in a unique way to the diversity of human cultures. The most famous twentieth century proponent of the idea, Isaiah Berlin (interpreting Herder, who first saw this idea as significant) writes:

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).

The carrier of basic value is thus the totality of cultures, from which each national culture and style of life that contributes to the totality derives its own value. The plurality of styles can be preserved and enhanced by tying the styles to ethno-national “forms of life.” The argument from diversity is therefore pluralistic: it ascribes value to each particular culture from the viewpoint of the totality of cultures available. 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. A pragmatic inconsistency might threaten this argument. The issue is who can legitimately propose ethno-national diversity as ideal: the nationalist is much too tied to his or her own culture to do it, while the cosmopolitan is too eager to preserve intercultural links that go beyond the idea of having a single nation-state. Moreover, is diversity a value such that it deserves to be protected whenever it exists?

The line of thought (1) is not individualistic. And (5) can be presented without reference to individuals: Diversity may be good in its own right, or may be good for nations. But other lines of thought in the set just presented are all linked to the importance of community life in relation to the individual. They emerged from the perspective of “deep” communitarian thought, and a recurrent theme is the importance of the fact that membership in the community is not chosen but rather involuntary. In each argument, there is a general communitarian premise (a community, to which one belongs willy-nilly, is crucial for one's identity or for flourishing or for some other important good). This premise is coupled with the more narrow nation-centered descriptive claim that the ethno-nation is precisely the kind of community ideally suited for the task. However, liberal nationalists do not find these arguments completely persuasive. In their view, the premises of the arguments may not support the full package of nationalist ambitions and may not be unconditionally valid. Still, there is a lot to these arguments and they might support liberal nationalism and a more modest stance in favor of national cultures.

The liberal nationalist stance is mild and civil and there is much to be said in favor of it. It strives 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, 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. (For example, Canovan 1996: ch. 10) presents Tamir as having abandoned the ideal of the nation-state and thereby nationhood as such; Seymour (1999) criticizes Taylor and Kymlicka for turning their backs on genuine nationalist programs and for proposing multiculturalism instead of nationalism.) There is also a streak of cosmopolitan interest present in the work of some liberal nationalists (Nielsen 1998-99).

The arguments in the second set concern political justice and do not rely on metaphysical claims about identity, flourishing or 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 redress of 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.

(1) The Argument From the Right to Collective Self-Determination . A sufficiently large group of people has a prima face right to govern itself and to 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 being independent from, and prior to, the choices of particular individuals. (For extended discussion of this argument, see Buchanan 1991, which has become a contemporary classic, Moore 1998, and Gans 2003.)

(2) The Argument from the Right to Self-defense and to Redress Past Injustices . Oppression and injustice give the victim group a just cause and the right to secede. If a minority group is oppressed by the majority, so that nearly all minority members are worse off than most majority members, then the nationalist minority claims are morally plausible and may even be compelling. The argument implies a restrictive answer to our questions (2b) and (2c): the use of force in order to achieve sovereignty is legitimate only in cases of self-defense and redress. Of course, there is a whole lot of work to be done specifying against whom force may legitimately be used and how much damage may be done to how many. It establishes a typical remedial right, which is acceptable from a liberal standpoint. (See the discussion in Kukathas and Poole 2000, also Buchanan 1991.)

(3) The Argument from Equality . Members of a minority group are often disadvantaged in relation to a dominant culture because they have to rely on those with the same language and culture to conduct the affairs of daily life. Since freedom to conduct one's daily life is a primary good and it is difficult to change or give up reliance on one's minority culture to attain that good, this reliance can lead to certain inequalities if special measures are not taken. Spontaneous nation building by the majority has to be moderated. Therefore, liberal neutrality itself requires that the majority provide certain basic cultural goods, i.e., granting differential rights (see Kymlicka 1995b, 2001 and 2003). 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 (Kymlicka 2001 and 2003).

(4) The Argument from Success . The nation-state has been successful in the past, promoting equality and democracy. Ethno-national solidarity is a powerful motive for a more egalitarian distribution of goods (Miller 1995 and Canovan 1996). 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.)

These political arguments can be combined with deep communitarian ones. However, taken in isolation, they offer the more interesting perspective of a “liberal culturalism” that is more suitable for ethno-culturally plural societies. It is more remote from classical nationalism than the liberal nationalism of Tamir and Nielsen, since it eschews any communitarian philosophical underpinning (see the detailed presentation and defense in Kymlicka 2001, who still occasionally calls such culturalism ‘nationalist,’ and a short summary in Kymlicka 2003 and Gans 2003). 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 up against others, participates in a common, overlapping civic culture and in open communication with other sub-communities. Given the variety of pluralistic societies and intense transnational 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). This openness is important to avoid the trap called by Margaret Canovan “the paradox of the prowling cats” (2001). She warns that “new nationalist theories inadvertently contain perverse incentives to nationalists to do the exact opposite of what the theorist intends to authorize.” The only solution seems to be extreme moderation. The dialectics of moderating nationalist claims in the context of pluralistic societies might thus lead to a stance that is respectful of cultural differences, but liberal and potentially cosmopolitan in its ultimate goals.

In recent years the issues of nationalism have also been increasingly integrated into the debate on international order (see entries Globalization and Cosmopolitanism). The main conceptual link is the claim that nation-states are natural, stable and suitable units of international order. It is underpinned by the assumption that to each nation-state corresponds its “people,” culturally homogenous population whose members are prone to solidarity with their compatriots. The center-stage of the recent debate is John Rawls's view set out in his The Law of Peoples (1999), which ascribes a great deal of political promise and a high moral value to the international system composed of liberal and decent nation-states. More cosmopolitan critics of Rawls argue against such a high status for nation-states and against the assumption of homogenous “peoples” (Pogge 2001 and 2002, O’Neill 2000, Nussbaum 2002, and Barry 1999). A related debate concerns the role of minorities in the processes of globalization (see Kaldor 2004). The interest of philosophers in the morality of the international order has generated interesting proposals about alternative subnational and supranational units, which could play a role alongside nation-states and might even come to supplement them (for an interesting recent overview of alternatives see Walzer 2004: chapter 12).

The philosophy of nationalism nowadays does not concern itself much with the aggressive and dangerous form of invidious nationalism that often occupies center stage in the news and in sociological research. Although this pernicious form can be of significant instrumental value mobilizing oppressed people and giving them a sense of dignity, its moral costs are usually taken by philosophers to outweigh its benefits. Nationalist-minded philosophers distance themselves from such aggressive nationalisms and mainly seek to construct and defend very moderate versions; these have therefore come to be the main focus of recent philosophical debate.

In presenting the claims that nationalists defend, we have started from more radical ones and have moved towards liberal nationalist alternatives. In examining the argument for these claims, we have first presented metaphysically demanding communitarian arguments, resting upon deep communitarian assumptions about culture, such as the premise that the ethno-cultural nation is universally the central and most important community for each human individual. This is an interesting and respectable claim, but its plausibility has not yet been established. The moral debate about nationalism has resulted in various weakenings of the cultural arguments, 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 its 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 transnational 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 the concerns of justice. These stress the practical importance of ethno-cultural membership, various rights to redress injustice, democratic rights of political association and the role that ethno-cultural ties and associations can play in promoting just social arrangements. Liberal culturalists such as Kymlicka have proposed minimal and pluralistic versions of nationalism built around such arguments. In these minimal versions, the project of building classical nation-states is moderated or abandoned and replaced by a more sensitive form of national identity which can thrive in a multicultural society. This new project, however, might demand a further widening of moral perspectives. Given the experiences of the twentieth century, one can safely assume that culturally plural states divided into isolated and closed sub-communities glued together only by arrangements of mere modus vivendi are inherently unstable. Stability might therefore require that the plural society envisioned by liberal culturalists promote quite intense interaction between cultural groups in order to forestall mistrust, to reduce prejudice and to create a solid basis for cohabitation. On the other hand, once membership in multiple cultures and communities is admitted as legitimate, social groups will spread beyond the borders of a single state (e.g. groups bound by religious or racial ties) as well as within them, thus creating an opening for at least a minimal cosmopolitan perspective. The internal dialectic of the concern for ethno-cultural identity might thus lead to pluralistic and potentially cosmopolitan political arrangements that are rather distant from what was classically understood as nationalism.

A Beginner's Guide to the Literature

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

Gellner, E., 1983, Nations and Nationalism , Blackwell, Oxford.
Smith, A. D., 1991, National Identity , Penguin, Harmondsworth

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

McKim, R. and McMahan, J. (eds.), 1997, The Morality of Nationalism , Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Couture, J., Nielsen, K., and Seymour, M. (eds.), 1998, Rethinking Nationalism , Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplement Volume 22.

The debate continues in:

Miscevic, N. (ed.), 2000, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict. Philosophical Perspectives . Open Court, La Salle and Chicago.

A good sociological introduction to the gender-inspired criticism of nationalism is:

Yuval-Davis, N., 1997, Gender and Nation , Sage Publications,

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

Avineri, S. and de-Shalit, A. (eds.), 1992, Communitarianism and Individualism , Oxford University Press, Oxford.

For a non-nationalist defense of culturalist claims see

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

Three very readable philosophical defenses of very moderate nationalism are:

Miller, D., 1995, On Nationality , Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Tamir, Y., 1993, Liberal Nationalism , Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Gans, C., 2003, The Limits of Nationalism , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.

A polemical, witty and thoughtful criticism is offered in

Barry, B., 2001, Culture and Equality, Polity Press, Cambridge UK.

An influential critical analysis of group solidarity in general and nationalism in particular, written in the tradition of rational choice theory is:

Hardin, R., 1985, One for All, The Logic of Group Conflict , Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.

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

Motyl, A. (ed.) 2001, Encyclopedia of Nationalism, v. I, Academic Press, New York.

A detailed sociological study of life under nationalist rule is:

Billig, M., 1995, Banal Nationalism , Sage Publications, London.

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

Cohen, J. (ed.), 1996, Martha Nussbaum and respondents, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism , Beacon Press, Boston
Anderson, B., 1965, Imagined Communities , Verso, London.
Aron, R., 1962, Peace and War , R. Krieger Publishing company Malabar.
Balibar, E., and Wallerstein, I., 1992, Class, Race Nation . Verso, London and New York
Barber, B., 1996, “Constitutional Faith,” in Cohen (ed.).
Barry, B., 1999, “Statism and Nationalism: a Cosmopolitan Critique,” in Shapiro and Brilmayer (eds.).
Barry, B., 2001, Culture and Equality, Polity, Cambridge UK.
Berlin, I., 1976, Vico and Herder, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Berlin, I, 1979, “Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power,” in Against the Current , Penguin, New York.
Breuilly, J., 2001, “The State,”, in Motyl (ed.).
Brubaker, R. 2004, “In the Name of the Nation: Reflections on Nationalism and Patriotism,” in Citizenship Studies, v. 8, No.2., 115-127.
Buchanan, A, 1991, Secession. The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec, Westview Press, Boulder.
Canovan, M., 1996, Nationhood and Political Theory , Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
Canovan, M., 2001, “ Sleeping Dogs, Prowling Cats and Soaring Doves: Three Paradoxes in the Political Theory of Nationhood,” Political Studies, v. 49, 203-215.
Chatterjee, D.K. and Smith, B (eds.), 2003, Moral Distance, issue of The Monist , v. 86. No3.
Cohen, J. (ed.), 1996, Martha Nussbaum and respondents, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism , Beacon Press, Boston.
Couture, J., Nielsen, K. and Seymour, M. (eds.), 1998, Rethinking Nationalism , Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Supplement Volume 22.
Crowley, B.I., 1987, The Self, the Individual and the Community , Clarendon Press: Oxford.
Eisenberg, A. and Spinner-Halev, J., (eds.), 2005, Minorities Within Minorities , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Gans, C., 2003, The Limits of Nationalism , Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press.
Goetze, D., 2001, “Evolutionary Theory,” in Motyl (ed.).
Habermas, J., 1996 Between Facts and Norms: Contribution to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy , Polity Press, Cambridge UK.
Hardin, Russell, 1985, One for All, The Logic of Group Conflict , Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Hastings, A., 1997, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
Hechter, M., 2001, Containing Nationalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Hobsbawn, E. J., 1990, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Joppke, C. and Lukes, S. (eds.), 1999, Multicultural Questions, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Kaldor, M., 2004, “Nationalism and Globalisation,” Nations and Nationalism, v.10 (1/2), 161-177.
Kedourie, E., 1960, Nationalism , Hutchison, London.
Kohn, H., 1965, Nationalism: its Meaning and History , Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York.
Kukathas, C. and Poole, R. (eds.), 2000, Special Issue on Indigenous Rights, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , v.78
Kuran Burcoglu, N. (ed), 1997, Multiculturalism: Identity and Otherness , Bogazici University Press, Istanbul.
Kymlicka, W., 1995b, Multicultural Citizenship . Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Kymlicka, W., 2001, Politics in the Vernacular , Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Kymlicka, W., 2003, “Liberal Theories of Multiculturalism,” in L. H. Meyer, S. L. Paulson, and T. W. Pogge (eds.), Rights, Culture and the Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Kymlicka, W., Patten, A. (eds.), 2004, Language Rights and Political Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Lagerspetz, O., 2000, “On National Belonging,” in Miscevic (ed.).
Laitin, D., 1998, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad , Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y.
Laitin, D. 2001, “Political Science,” in Motyl (ed.).
Laitin, D.D., Reich, R., 2004, “A Liberal Democratic Approach to Language Justice,” in Kymlicka and Patten (eds.).
Levy, J., 2000, Multiculturalism of Fear , Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Lichtenberg, J., 1997, “Nationalism, For and (Mainly) Against,” in McKim and McMahan (eds.).
MacCormick, N., 1982, Legal Right and Social Democracy , Clarendon Press, Oxford.
MacIntyre, A., 1994, “Is Patriotism a Virtue,” in Communitarianism , ed. M. Daly. Wadsworth, Belmont, Ca.
Margalit, A., 1997, “The Moral Psychology of Nationalism,” in McKim and McMahan (eds.).
Markell, P., 2000, “Making Affect Safe for Democracy: On ‘Constitutional Patriotism’,” Political Theory, v. 28 (1), 38-63.
Margalit, A. and Raz, J., 1990, “National Self-Determination,” The Journal of Philosophy , v. LXXXVII, no.9, 439-461.
Mason, A., 1999, “Political Community, Liberal-Nationalism and the Ethics of Assimilation,” Ethics , v. 109, 261-286.
McCabe, D., 1997, “Patriotic Gore Again,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy , 35: 203-223.
Meinecke, F., 1965 /1924/, Machiavellism , Praeger, New York.
Miller, D., 1992, “Community and Citizenship,” (from his Market, State and Community ), reprinted in Avineri and de Shalit: Communitarianism and Individualism , Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Miller, D., 2000, Citizenship and National Identity, Blackwell, Oxford.
Miscevic, N., 2001, Nationalism and Beyond , Central European University Press, Budapest, New York
Moore, M. (ed.), 1998, National Self-Determination and Secession , Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Moore, M., 2001, “Normative justifications for liberal nationalism: justice, democracy and national identity,” Nations and Nationalism, 7(1), 1-20.
Morgenthau, H., 1946, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Motyl, A. (ed.) 2001, Encyclopedia of Nationalism, v. I , Academic Press, New York.
Nielsen, K., 1998, “Liberal Nationalism, Liberal Democracies and Secession,” University of Toronto Law Journal , vol. no.48, pp. 253-295.
Nielsen, K., 1998-99, “Cosmopolitanism, Universalism and Particularism in the age of Nationalism and Multiculturalism,” Philosophical Exchange , 29: 3-34.
Nussbaum, M. C. 2002, “Justice for the Excluded in the World,” Tanner Lecture at Australian National University.
O'Neill, 2000, Bounds of Justice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
Okin, S. M., 1999, “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” and “Response,” in Boston Review , 1997, reprinted with some revisions in Cohen, J., Howard, M. and Nussbaum, M. (eds.), Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? , Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Okin, S. M., 2002, “‘Mistresses of Their Own Destiny’: Group Rights, Gender, and Realistic Rights of Exit,” Ethics , 112, 205-230.
Okin, S. M., 2005, “Multiculturalism and Feminism: No Simple Question, No Simple Answers,” in Eisenberg and Spinner-Halev (eds.).
Oldenquist, A., 1997, “Who are the Rightful Owners of the State?,” in Kohler, P. and Puhl, K. (eds.) Proceedings of the 19 th International Wittgenstein Symposium , Holder Pichler Tempsky, Vienna.
Özkirimli, U., 2003, “The Nation as an Artichoke? A critique of ethnosymbolist interpretations of nationalism,” Nation and Nationalism , v. 9. No. 3, 339-355.
Pogge, T., 1997, “Group Rights and Ethnicity,” in Shapiro and Kymlicka (eds.).
Pogge, T., 2001, “Rawls on International Justice,” The Philosophical Quarterly , 51 (203), 246-53.
Pogge, T., 2002, World Poverty and Human Rights , Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.
Putnam, H., 1996, “Must We Choose between Patriotism and Universal Reason?,” in Cohen (ed.).
Rawls, J., 1999, The Law of Peoples, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.
Renan, E., 1882, “What is a Nation?,” in Nation and Narration , H. Bhabha (ed.), Routledge, London; also in Nationalisms , Hutchinson, J. and Smith, A. (eds.), Oxford University Press. Oxford.
Seymour, M., 1999, La nation en question , L’Hexagone, Montreal.
Seymour, M., 2000, “On Redefining the Nation,” in Miscevic (ed.).
Shapiro, I., and Kymlicka, W. (eds.), 1997, Ethnicity and Group Rights , Nomos XXXIX, New York University Press, New York
Shapiro, I. and Brilmayer, L. (eds.) (1999), Global Justice, NOMOS v. XLI, New York University Press, New York.
Smith, A. D., 1991, National Identity , Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Smith, A, D., 2001, Nationalism , K, Polity Press, Cambridge UK.
Sober, E., and Wilson, D.S., 1998, Unto Others , Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass.
Smith A. D., 2003, “The poverty of anti-nationalist modernism,” Nation and Nationalism , v. 9. No. 3, 357-370.
Tajfel, H., 1981, Human Groups and Social Categories, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Tamir, Y., 1993, Liberal Nationalism , Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey
Taylor, C., 1989, Sources of the Self , Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.
Taylor, C., 1993, Reconciling the Solitudes , McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal.
Twining, W. (ed.), 1991, Issues of Self-determination . Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen.
Vincent, A, 2001, “Political Theory,” in Motyl (ed.).
Walker, R., 2001, “Postmodernism,” in Motyl (ed.).
Walzer, M., 2002, “Passion and Politics,” in Philosophy and Social Criticism, v. 28, no. 6. 617-633.
Walzer, M., 2004, Arguing about War , Yale University Press, New Haven and London.
Weber, M., 1970, From Max Weber (selections translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills), Routledge, London.
Yuval-Davis, N., 1997, Gender and Nation , Sage Publications, London.
Barry, Brian., 2003, “ Can Social Democracy Survive Cultural Diversity? ” (109KB Word document). Lecture by Professor Brian Barry (Columbia) at the UCL Department of Political Science in November 2003.
Miller, David, 2003, “ Immigration: the Case for Limits ” (66KB Word document). Lecture by Professor David Miller (Oxford) at the UCL Department of Political Science in October 2003.
Nationalism Links , maintained by Peter Rasmussen. [A good collection of links and bibliographies.]
The Warwick Debates on Nationalism , Debate between and Anthony D. Smith and Ernest Gellner, at Warwick University, on October 24, 1995 (reproduced on E. Gellner's website at the London School of Economics).
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.
Nations and States . Web pages at the Global Policy Forum website, with papers on the future of nation-states.
European University Institute . This institute's web pages features European perspectives on nations, nationalism and nation-states.

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World History Project - Origins to the Present

Course: world history project - origins to the present > unit 6.

READ: Sovereignty
BEFORE YOU WATCH: The Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment
WATCH: The Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment
READ: Ingredients for Revolution
READ: The Enlightenment
READ: The Atlantic Revolutions
BEFORE YOU WATCH: The Haitian Revolution
WATCH: The Haitian Revolution
READ: West Africa in the Age of Revolutions

READ: Origins and Impacts of Nationalism

BEFORE YOU WATCH: Nationalism
WATCH: Nationalism
BEFORE YOU WATCH: Samurai, Daimyo, Matthew Perry, and Nationalism
WATCH: Samurai, Daimyo, Matthew Perry, and Nationalism
Liberal and National Revolutions

First read: preview and skimming for gist

Second read: key ideas and understanding content.

What is a nation? Are nations natural or biological?
Why does the author describe nations as an “imagined communities”?
How did French military victories contribute to the rise of nationalism in France and elsewhere?
In what context did nationalism take hold in Europe? In the Americas?
What factors helped nationalism take hold in Germany and Italy?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

What is the author’s main argument about nationalism? Do you find it convincing? Why or why not?
What are some of the ways in which nationalism helped liberate people or bring about positive political change in this era? Can you predict any potential problems or challenges that nationalism might also bring? If so, what are they?

Origins and Impacts of Nationalism

What exactly is nationalism, other reasons…, conclusions and future differences, want to join the conversation.

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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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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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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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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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2 Theories of Nationalism and National Identity

Published: December 2005
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This chapter addresses how liberal nationalist theorists have constructed an argument to the effect that sub-state national societies constitute a distinct category of group, distinguishable from both the majority of ‘dominant’ national society of the host state, and other ‘minority’ groups within the state. It explores the objective and subjective features of identity which liberal nationalists have identified as characteristic of a national society, and which help to explain the resilience of national identity at sub-state level. The chapter examines how different traditions have emerged in the study of nationalism. In particular, it discusses the dominant ‘modernist’ school of nationalism which has attempted to explain nationalism as an essentially instrumental device.

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1 hr 39 min

Gregory J. Goalwin, "Borders of Belief: Religious Nationalism and the Formation of Identity in Ireland and Turkey" (Rutgers UP, 2022‪)‬ Rutgers University Press Podcast

Despite theories to the contrary, religious nationalism, and the use of religion to determine membership in the national community, has continued to play a role in processes of identification in societies all around the globe ... and such processes seems likely to continue to structure the ways in which communities view themselves even in today’s globalized and seemingly secularized world. – Gregory Goalwin, Borders of Belief: Religious Nationalism and the Formation of Identity in Ireland and Turkey (Rutgers UP, 2022) Religion and nationalism are two of the most powerful forces in the world. And as powerful as they are separately, humans throughout history have fused religious beliefs and nationalist politics to develop religious nationalism, which uses religious identity to define membership in the national community. But why and how have modern nationalists built religious identity as the foundational signifier of national identity in what sociologists have predicted would be a more secular world? This book takes two cases - nationalism in both Ireland and Turkey in the 20th century - as a foundation to advance a new theory of religious nationalism. By comparing cases, Goalwin emphasizes how modern political actors deploy religious identity as a boundary that differentiates national groups. This theory argues that religious nationalism is not a knee-jerk reaction to secular modernization, but a powerful movement developed as a tool that forges new and independent national identities. "In an age where religious nationalisms and populisms are on the rise, Goalwin's comparative-historical work is a welcome contribution for comprehending how religious identities and politics interact. A valuable source for social scientists as well as non-specialists who are interested in this complex phenomenon." – Efe Peker, co-author, Challenging Neoliberalism at Turkey’s Gezi Park: From Private Discontent to Collective Action Gregory Goalwin is an assistant professor of sociology at Aurora University in Illinois. His research has been published in journals including Social Science History, Patterns of Prejudice, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Nationalities Papers, and the Journal of Historical Sociology.

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Ethnic Nationalism in the Modern World Essay

Introduction, origin of ethnic nationalism, is ethnic nationalism bad, what ethnic nationalism and governance, territorial nationalisms and ethnic nationalisms, ethnic nationalism and world war i, ethnic nationalism and the future, ethnic nationalism and stability.

Many people in the world base their national identity on race, language, kinship, and the general culture of their respective countries. Basing national identity along these lines is what is known as ethnonationalism. Every country has had its experiences with ethnonationalism.

Americans for instance, hate the idea of ethnic nationalism because it has people of varying ethnic origins. It has gone through generations of immigrations, cultural assimilations and intermarriages that have reduced the strength of ethnic identities. Many countries are still grappling with the issue of ethnic enclaves. This paper will explore in detail the issue of ethnonationalism in the world today, its consequences and possible solutions.

Many social scientists have tried to show that ethnic nationalism is a product that is deliberately formed by culture; they argue that it is not a natural phenomenon as many people would think. Value systems that are found on narrow identities of groups have also been scorned by ethicists.

All these efforts have not and apparently, will not erase ethnonationalism from people’s way of life. Many people who immigrate to new countries are always prepared to fit and reshape their specific identities into the new order. However, many of those who remain in their ancestral lands have resorted to political identities based on ethnic forms. These identities have, on many occasions, resulted in groups competing for political power based on communal grounds.

This has always ended in violent processes of ethnic separation to solve the issue. This has led to the common belief that countries that enjoy political stability are mostly made up of citizens from a common ancestry. A narrative from the European history alluded to this belief by saying that the two world wars were caused by nationalism, a phenomenon that Europeans saw as a danger and consequently abandoned it (Muller, 2008, p. 1).

This notion that nationalism was dangerous saw Europeans embark on the formation of transnational institutions such as the European Union after the war. The fall of the Soviet Union allowed this idea to spread to the whole of Europe. Many people saw this as a good example to the rest of the world, but the dreadful experiences that immigrants especially those of the African and Asian decent go through at European boarders show that the menace of ethnonationalism is not yet completely erased in Europe.

Surveys have shown that by the start of the 20 th century, there were many countries that had no single ethnic majority in Europe, but by 2007, two countries, Switzerland and Belgium have single ethnic groups. Ethnic balance of power in these countries is protected by stringent citizenship laws (Muller, 2008, 1).

Therefore, it still remains that ethnonationalism is a major cause of the plight of minority groups and the increase of refugees in the world today. Many ethnic intellectuals form ethnic nations by vernacular mobilization of the people. They do this by redefining, reeducating and finally, regenerating their ethnic roots.

They then politicize their cultures after which they embark on ridding their countries of Aliens by expelling or even exterminating minority groups who are seen as outsiders within their boundaries. As already mentioned above, the close of the 20 th century saw nationalism become a powerful political and social force in the world. This force has not only fostered good relationships between states, but has also spread all over the world as a strong tool for collective protest against power distribution in and among states.

This has often turned out to be a very dangerous and unpredictable scare to the order that the world enjoys today, although it also guarantees the shaping of the order by the majority. It has also been argued that nationalism accomplishes two things at the same time; it makes sure that people are secure from imperial tyrannies, and it also paves way for local tyrannies to be formed (Smith, 1994, p. 186).

Many refugee camps are filled every year as a result of ethnic conflicts within countries and among states. This flow of refugees has often been met with resistance as ethnic groups in host countries seek to assert themselves. This has seen countries place tight restrictions on entry into their countries for fear of reigniting ethnic tensions in their countries, or for fear of conflicts with the home countries of asylum seekers.

This does not mean that ethnic conflicts are entirely to blame for the rise in refugees, but it has contributed to some extent. Fear, suspicion and resentment are all products of ethnonationalism that have seen countries, especially in the developed world erect entry barriers to immigrants, in particular, economic migrants who are the majority of non-nationals in those countries (Smith, 1994, p. 187).

In ethnonationalism, a nation or a country is understood as a cultural and historical community that is linked in solidarity with a bond just like the familial bond. In this case, common ancestry qualifies an individual to reside in a nation that is not defined territory, but by descent.

People in such nations value vernacular cultures and popular mobilizations rather than legal equality and citizenship. Native history as well as ethnic culture is encouraged in the communities. This is why many nations in the world today are just socially constructed units that have been created by ethnic nationalist where they never existed before.

This is why the world today has many new nations that were formed by ethnic groups that sought to govern themselves. It is also true that those countries with stable and durable solidarities and unique cultural heritage were founded on strong ethnic ties. In other words, nations with strong ethnic histories have high probabilities of becoming viable political units (Smith, 1994, p. 187). There are many reasons for this assumption, but three of these are seen to strongly justify it.

The first reason is from a historical point of view. Many nations have come into being because of the ethnic ties and state activities that occur on the ground. Secondly, a nation and an ethnic community are sociological related. The nation just modifies the features of the ethnic community to place it on the territorial, social and legal map.

The third reason is political, where nations are seen in ethnic terms, or ethnic models are used in the formation of new nations. This has often been the major cause of all conflicts within and between states. It is expected that the formation of a nation based entirely on the model of an older ethnic community will bring problems. In the world today, modern nations cannot be expected to be exactly like the ancient ethnic communities. Today nations are more compact and demarcated along territorial lines.

They portray a single public culture, a single division of labor that is strength by freedom of movement, and members adhere to a single code of laws that protect their common rights and duties. Changing all these to fit into an ethnic model creates ethnic conflicts that are usually experienced in many countries (Smith, 1994, p. 188)

This is what brings out the difference between territorial nationalisms and ethnic nationalisms. Territorial nationalisms only strive to give a nation a common history and culture that will allow everyone to participate in it. Ethnic nationalisms on the other hand, are not content with a common history and culture, but go ahead to specify that a nation should have a common ancestry. That means that ethnic nationalism requires that only those with a common descent are allowed in an ethnic nation.

This view has been held by many countries including the US. For many years in the history of the US, people believed that only those of an English origin, or those from Northern Europe and Protestants, were true Americans. Asians had been excluded and immigration from eastern and southern Europe was restricted for many years by the system of national-origin quotas that was abolished by the 1965 immigration law amendment (Muller, 2008, 1).

Sociologists have argued that ethnic nationalism did not just happen by mistake, but was gradually developed by the changes that were brought about by modernity. States started competing on the military level, this created demand for state resources and eventual economic growth. However, all these depended on literacy and easy communication among the masses. This created the need to for education and hence a common language.

Conflicts over what language should be used and communal opportunities ensued, leading to ethnic groups splitting into their own territories.

As different ethnic groups moved into cities, they discovered through education that all important positions in government and in the economic sphere had been occupied by the majority ethnic groups. This saw groups sharing a similar language come together to define their groups and later own demanded their own nation state in which they would have a chance to manage their own affairs (Muller, 2008, p. 1).

World War I also contributed to the growth of ethnic nationalism. In Europe the war led to the breaking of the three famous empires. Mass murders and deportations of the minorities were witnessed in the Ottoman Empire in the name of ethnic cleansing. The Romanov and the Hapsburg empires broke up into small countries where the dominant group was protected. Governments discriminated against the minority.

They carried out government obligations in the majorities’ language, which meant that only those who spoke the language could work in civil positions. Ethnonationalism was also exhibited by the Germans when they discriminated against the Jews. In fact, during the World War II, they went to the extent of trying to eliminate all Jews from Europe by killing them. This was the most severe effect of ethnonationalism that has ever been felt in the history of the world (Muller, 2008, p. 1).

World leaders saw that the only solution to the Germany menace was to remove Germans from non-Germany nations. They believed that to end conflicts, there should be no more mixing of ethnic groups. As much as this was a solution to the ethnic problem posed by the Nazis, it was in fact, ethnic nationalism in practice. Germans were separated from the other ethnic groups.

The few Jews who survived found it hard to stay in Europe; this explains why most of them left Central and Eastern Europe for good to settle in America and Israel. It was this ethnic mixing that led to the idea of ethnonationalism in Europe. That is why many European countries are made up of almost one ethnic nationality. The disintegration of Yugoslavia was just the last effect of Ethnonationalism in Europe.

Ethnonationalism has also been felt else where in the world. When European occupation of other countries in the world ended, people started grouping into ethnic community and expelling those they felt did not belong to their groups. For instance, the creation of India and Pakistan occurred after the end of the British Raj along ethnic lines. In Africa, Algerians forced out Algerians of European origin, postcolonial Uganda expelled the ethnic minorities of Asian origin (Muller, 2008, p. 1).

Ethnic nationalism is bound to be experienced for generations in the future particularly in newly created states. In such states, borders may cut across ethnic boundaries leading to communal conflict and ethnic disaggregation.

To solve this problem has always been hard. It is not easy to keep peace between groups that hate and fear each other. This calls for permanent solutions. Returning expelled groups to their former land will not help but stages the ground for future conflicts. Separation or partition is therefore the only best solution in such cases.

However, if there is a possibility a permanent reconciliation, then formation of a culturally cohesive community with different ethnic groups is better. This has been possible in some countries; of particular success has been the US (Muller, 2008, p. 1). It is worth noting that the post election violence in Kenya in 2007 can best be explained from the ethnic point of view. The newest state on earth, Republic of South Sudan which is less than two months old is a result of ethnic nationalism.

So far we have seen that ethnonationalism has always been the cause of tension and conflicts in the world. However, it has also brought about cohesion and stability. Countries in Europe have enjoyed harmony since the end of WW II because ethnic nationalism succeeded in removing any possible source of conflict in and outside state boundaries. Thanks to ethnonationalism, these countries now enjoy internal solidarity that has facilitated smooth running of government functions.

The negative effects of ethnonationalism are only felt in the early stages when ethnic groups seek to assert their dominance, once this is achieved, a period of tranquility follows for generations to come. This does not mean that ethnonationalism should be encouraged especially in the modern world today. Instead, nations should move towards states that are more inclusive in the cultural, territorial and political spheres of life (Muller, 2008, p. 1).

This essay has shown that ethnonationalism has come along way in the social political and economic history of states in the world. There are those nations that refrain at the mention of ethnonationalism like the United States, but there are those that appreciate and have successful used ethnonationalism such the European nations.

We have seen that European stability after WW II and during the Cold War era owes its success on ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism has continued to shape the borders of many nations in the world and apparently it is here to stay. For instance ethnic nationalism is also tied to the creation of the newest country in Africa and the world, Southern Sudan, which will be granted its independence in July.

Muller, J, 2008, The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism. Retrieved from: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/the_enduring_power_of_ethnic_n.html

Smith, A 1994, Ethnic Nationalism and the Plight of Minorities. Retrieved from: https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article-abstract/7/2-3/186/1531625?redirectedFrom=PDF

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Guest Essay

I Thought the Bragg Case Against Trump Was a Legal Embarrassment. Now I Think It’s a Historic Mistake.

A black-and-white photo with a camera in the foreground and mid-ground and a building in the background.

By Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Mr. Shugerman is a law professor at Boston University.

About a year ago, when Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, indicted former President Donald Trump, I was critical of the case and called it an embarrassment. I thought an array of legal problems would and should lead to long delays in federal courts.

After listening to Monday’s opening statement by prosecutors, I still think the district attorney has made a historic mistake. Their vague allegation about “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” has me more concerned than ever about their unprecedented use of state law and their persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud.

To recap: Mr. Trump is accused in the case of falsifying business records. Those are misdemeanor charges. To elevate it to a criminal case, Mr. Bragg and his team have pointed to potential violations of federal election law and state tax fraud. They also cite state election law, but state statutory definitions of “public office” seem to limit those statutes to state and local races.

Both the misdemeanor and felony charges require that the defendant made the false record with “intent to defraud.” A year ago, I wondered how entirely internal business records (the daily ledger, pay stubs and invoices) could be the basis of any fraud if they are not shared with anyone outside the business. I suggested that the real fraud was Mr. Trump’s filing an (allegedly) false report to the Federal Election Commission, and that only federal prosecutors had jurisdiction over that filing.

A recent conversation with Jeffrey Cohen, a friend, Boston College law professor and former prosecutor, made me think that the case could turn out to be more legitimate than I had originally thought. The reason has to do with those allegedly falsified business records: Most of them were entered in early 2017, generally before Mr. Trump filed his Federal Election Commission report that summer. Mr. Trump may have foreseen an investigation into his campaign, leading to its financial records. He may have falsely recorded these internal records before the F.E.C. filing as consciously part of the same fraud: to create a consistent paper trail and to hide intent to violate federal election laws, or defraud the F.E.C.

In short: It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up.

Looking at the case in this way might address concerns about state jurisdiction. In this scenario, Mr. Trump arguably intended to deceive state investigators, too. State investigators could find these inconsistencies and alert federal agencies. Prosecutors could argue that New York State agencies have an interest in detecting conspiracies to defraud federal entities; they might also have a plausible answer to significant questions about whether New York State has jurisdiction or whether this stretch of a state business filing law is pre-empted by federal law.

However, this explanation is a novel interpretation with many significant legal problems. And none of the Manhattan district attorney’s filings or today’s opening statement even hint at this approach.

Instead of a theory of defrauding state regulators, Mr. Bragg has adopted a weak theory of “election interference,” and Justice Juan Merchan described the case , in his summary of it during jury selection, as an allegation of falsifying business records “to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 election.”

As a reality check: It is legal for a candidate to pay for a nondisclosure agreement. Hush money is unseemly, but it is legal. The election law scholar Richard Hasen rightly observed , “Calling it election interference actually cheapens the term and undermines the deadly serious charges in the real election interference cases.”

In Monday’s opening argument, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo still evaded specifics about what was illegal about influencing an election, but then he claimed , “It was election fraud, pure and simple.” None of the relevant state or federal statutes refer to filing violations as fraud. Calling it “election fraud” is a legal and strategic mistake, exaggerating the case and setting up the jury with high expectations that the prosecutors cannot meet.

The most accurate description of this criminal case is a federal campaign finance filing violation. Without a federal violation (which the state election statute is tethered to), Mr. Bragg cannot upgrade the misdemeanor counts into felonies. Moreover, it is unclear how this case would even fulfill the misdemeanor requirement of “intent to defraud” without the federal crime.

In stretching jurisdiction and trying a federal crime in state court, the Manhattan district attorney is now pushing untested legal interpretations and applications. I see three red flags raising concerns about selective prosecution upon appeal.

First, I could find no previous case of any state prosecutor relying on the Federal Election Campaign Act either as a direct crime or a predicate crime. Whether state prosecutors have avoided doing so as a matter of law, norms or lack of expertise, this novel attempt is a sign of overreach.

Second, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the New York statute requires that the predicate (underlying) crime must also be a New York crime, not a crime in another jurisdiction. The district attorney responded with judicial precedents only about other criminal statutes, not the statute in this case. In the end, the prosecutors could not cite a single judicial interpretation of this particular statute supporting their use of the statute (a plea deal and a single jury instruction do not count).

Third, no New York precedent has allowed an interpretation of defrauding the general public. Legal experts have noted that such a broad “election interference” theory is unprecedented, and a conviction based on it may not survive a state appeal.

Mr. Trump’s legal team also undercut itself for its decisions in the past year: His lawyers essentially put all of their eggs in the meritless basket of seeking to move the trial to federal court, instead of seeking a federal injunction to stop the trial entirely. If they had raised the issues of selective or vindictive prosecution and a mix of jurisdictional, pre-emption and constitutional claims, they could have delayed the trial past Election Day, even if they lost at each federal stage.

Another reason a federal crime has wound up in state court is that President Biden’s Justice Department bent over backward not to reopen this valid case or appoint a special counsel. Mr. Trump has tried to blame Mr. Biden for this prosecution as the real “election interference.” The Biden administration’s extra restraint belies this allegation and deserves more credit.

Eight years after the alleged crime itself, it is reasonable to ask if this is more about Manhattan politics than New York law. This case should serve as a cautionary tale about broader prosecutorial abuses in America — and promote bipartisan reforms of our partisan prosecutorial system.

Nevertheless, prosecutors should have some latitude to develop their case during trial, and maybe they will be more careful and precise about the underlying crime, fraud and the jurisdictional questions. Mr. Trump has received sufficient notice of the charges, and he can raise his arguments on appeal. One important principle of “ our Federalism ,” in the Supreme Court’s terms, is abstention , that federal courts should generally allow state trials to proceed first and wait to hear challenges later.

This case is still an embarrassment, in terms of prosecutorial ethics and apparent selectivity. Nevertheless, each side should have its day in court. If convicted, Mr. Trump can fight many other days — and perhaps win — in appellate courts. But if Monday’s opening is a preview of exaggerated allegations, imprecise legal theories and persistently unaddressed problems, the prosecutors might not win a conviction at all.

Jed Handelsman Shugerman (@jedshug) is a law professor at Boston University.

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Nationalism
nationalism, ideology based on the premise that the individual's loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests. This article discusses the origins and history of nationalism to the 1980s. For later developments in the history of nationalism, see 20th-century international relations; European Union; and ...
Nationalism
1. What is a Nation? 1.1 The Basic Concept of Nationalism. 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 ...
Nationalism
Liberal nationalism is not part of an explanatory theory of nationalism. 18 Instead, it is an attempt to revise nationalism so that it can be reconciled with the dominant post-Enlightenment political framework, liberalism. Recall that the core ideology of nationalism involves certain claims about morality and human flourishing. ... An essay on ...
Nationalism: Theories and Classification
Nationalism is often seen as a political doctrine, with an ideology of self-governing entity results in what is popularly known as "nation-state". In other words, it is an ideology or a form of socio-cultural movement that drives a group of people towards forming a self governing state or nation (Smith, 1993, P.72). We will write a custom ...
Nationalism: Theory, Ideology and History
Anthony D Smith defined nationalism as a process of formation of nations with the help of ideologies or doctrines that helps in the formation of "national consciousness or sentiment" (2010, p. 6). Smith too believes that nationalism is an amalgamation of myth and sentiments that helps to bring the nation together.
Theories of Nationalism: A Brief Comparison of Realist and
This essay will attempt to explain the underlying philosophies that exist within the post-primordial and anti-essentialist school of liberal thought and chart the contributions made to the constructivist perception of the nation by focusing on Anderson, Gellner, Winichakul, and Hobsbawm as well as provide appropriate historical background to ...
Nationalism: What We Know and What We Still Need to Know
This review takes stock of political science debates on nationalism to critically assess what we already know and what we still need to know. We begin by synthesizing classic debates and tracing the origins of the current consensus that nations are historically contingent and socially constructed. We then highlight three trends in contemporary ...
Nationalism
Nationalism does not tend to foster this kind of multiculturalism and pluralism, judging from both theory (especially the classical nationalist one) and experience. But the problems get worse. In practice, a widespread variant of nationalism is the invidious particularistic form claiming rights for one's own people and denying them to others ...
READ: Origins and Impacts of Nationalism
Nations and nationalism are not very old but have had dramatic effects on how we view the world and each other. With the decline in the power of religion and religious authorities, people looked for a new way to identify themselves, they found this with their nations. The article below uses "Three Close Reads".
Nationalism
Abstract. This article describes the various forms of nationalism in political theory and the varieties of nationalism in practical politics. It discusses various elements of nationalism and suggests that the conception of nationalism depends on how national self-determination is understood. It argues that while nationalism serves to bind ...
Theories of Nationalism and Historical Explanation
But capturing nationalism in a theory has proved to be a difficult task. Analytical writings on the subject raise a number of problems which, once understood, cause much of the historical literature based ... Imagination and Precision in the Social Sciences, Essays in Memory of Peter Nettl (London: Faber & Faber, 1972), 385-406, at 400. 12 ...
Theories of Nationalism and Historical Explanation
Self-Proclaimed nationalist movements have been active since the 19th century; the history of nations, most would agree, can be traced back a good deal further. The importance of nationalism as a force in shaping the modern world seems undeniable, and as an idea, it continues to exhibit great intellectual potency.
Nationalism in the Modern-Day World
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.
PDF On the Nature of Nationalism: An Appraisal of Ernest Gellner's Writings
Dark Gods theory has it that nationalism is the inevitable expression of the atavistic, irrationalist passions that motivate human beings ... 2 A famous nineteenth-century illustration of a liberal criticism of nationalism is Lord Acton's 1862 essay on 'Nationality' (reprinted in J. R. Fears, ed., Essays in the History of Liberty: Selected
Notes on Nationalism
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.
Nationalism Essay for Students and Children
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.
Editorial: Sport, nationalism, and the importance of theory
However, in his more recent work which has drawn upon primordialist theory to examine the role of landscape in relation to 'national sports' (Bairner Citation 2009), he equally cautions against the over-dependence on the notion of the 'imagined community' in the study of sport and nationalism, arguing that its use can result in an over-simplification of the nuanced relationship between ...
Theorys On What Is Nationalism Sociology Essay
Carlton J. H. Hayes' definition of nationalism states, "Loyalty and attachment to the interior of the group (namely the nation and homeland) are the basis of nationalism.". In this definition, a common cultural background and common cultural group are considered the main factors in forming a nation.
Nationalism: Unity and Divisions
This paper will support this statement with two arguments. The first part will argue that nationalism is important in fostering a sense of belonging and patriotism by focusing on the theory of social identity and ethnic identification. The second part of the paper will argue that although nationalism is an important approach in fostering unity ...
Nationalism, Citizenship, and Gender
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. ... Smith, A.D. (2001) Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. Cambridge: Polity. Spiro, P.J. (2004) Mandated Membership, Diluted Identity: Citizenship, Globalization, and International Law. In ...
Psychological Theories for Nationalism and National Identity
This essay will look to compare and contrast alternative psychological accounts of nationalism and national identity using various theoretical and applied examples. Nationalism can be briefly described as a theory that gives people an identity as a nation through the imposition of similar identities. Kohn (1944) described it as an ideology ...
Theories of Nationalism and National Identity
Abstract. This chapter addresses how liberal nationalist theorists have constructed an argument to the effect that sub-state national societies constitute a distinct category of group, distinguishable from both the majority of 'dominant' national society of the host state, and other 'minority' groups within the state.
Gregory J. Goalwin, "Borders of Belief: Religious Nationalism and the
This book takes two cases - nationalism in both Ireland and Turkey in the 20th century - as a foundation to advance a new theory of religious nationalism. By comparing cases, Goalwin emphasizes how modern political actors deploy religious identity as a boundary that differentiates national groups.
Modi's Hindu Utopia Is a Tawdry Mirage
Siddhartha Deb ( @debhartha) is an Indian writer who lives in New York. His most recent novel is "The Light at the End of the World.". His new nonfiction book is "Twilight Prisoners: The ...
Ethnic Nationalism in the Modern World
It has gone through generations of immigrations, cultural assimilations and intermarriages that have reduced the strength of ethnic identities. Many countries are still grappling with the issue of ethnic enclaves. This paper will explore in detail the issue of ethnonationalism in the world today, its consequences and possible solutions.
Opinion
Now I Think It's a Historic Mistake. Mr. Shugerman is a law professor at Boston University. About a year ago, when Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, indicted former President Donald ...