Nations and Nationalism PDF
Preview Nations and Nationalism
N ations and N ationalism Ernest G ellner NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE PAST General Editor R.I. Moore Advisory Editors Gerald Aylmer loan Lewis Patrick Wormald Other Books by Ernest Gellner Words and Things Thought and Change Saints of the Atlas Contemporary Thought and Politics The Devil in Modern Philosophy Legitimation of Belief Spectacles and Predicaments Muslim Society Relativism in the Social Sciences The Psychoanalytic Movement The Concept of Kinship and Other Essays Plough, Sword, and Book State and Society in Social Thought Culture, Identity, and Politics Conditions of Liberty Encounters with Nationalism N ations and N ationalism Ernest Gellner Cornell University Press ITHACA, NEW YORK © Ernest Gellner 1983 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1983 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 1983 International Standard Book Number (paper) 0-8014-9263-7 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 83-71199 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. Books that bear the logo of the ESC (Forest Stewardship Council) use paper taken from forests that have been inspected and certified as meeting the highest standards for environmental and social responsibility. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Printed in the United States of America Paperback printing 10 9 Contents Editor’s preface Acknowledgements 1 Definitions 1 State and nation 3 The nation 5 2 Culture in Agrarian Society 8 Power and culture in the agro-literate polity 9 Culture 11 The state in agrarian society 13 The varieties of agrarian rulers 14 3 Industrial Society 19 The society of perpetual growth 24 Social genetics 29 The age of universal high culture 35 4 The Transition to an Age of Nationalism 39 A note on the weakness of nationalism 43 Wild and garden cultures 50 5 What is a Nation? 53 The course of true nationalism never did run smooth 58 6 Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society 63 Obstacles to entropy 64 Fissures and barriers 73 A diversity of focus 75 7 A Typology of Nationalisms 88 The varieties of nationalist experience 97 Diaspora nationalism 101 Contents 8 The Future of Nationalism no Industrial culture — one or many? 114 9 Nationalism and Ideology 123 Who is for Nuremberg? 130 One nation, one state 134 10 Conclusion 137 What is not being said 137 Summary 139 Select Bibliography 144 Index Editor’s Preface Ignorance has many forms, and all of them are dangerous. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries our chief effort has been to free ourselves from tradition and superstition in large questions, and from the error in small ones upon which they rest, by redefining the fields of knowledge and evolving in each the distinctive method appropriate for its cultivation. The achievement has been incal culable, but not without cost. As each new subject has developed a specialist vocabulary to permit rapid and precise reference to its own common and rapidly growing stock of ideas and discoveries, and come to require a greater depth of expertise from its specialists, scholars have been cut off by their own erudition not only from mankind at large, but from the findings of workers in other fields, and even in other parts of their own. Isolation diminishes not only the usefulness but the soundness of their labours when energies are exclusively devoted to eliminating the small blemishes so embar rassingly obvious to the fellow-professional on the next patch, instead of avoiding others that may loom much larger from, as it were, a more distant vantage point. Marc Bloch observed a contra diction in the attitudes of many historians: ‘when it is a question of ascertaining whether or not some human act has really taken place, they cannot be too painstaking. If they proceed to the reasons for that act, they are content with the merest appearance, ordinarily founded upon one of those maxims of common-place psychology which are neither more nor less true than their opposites.’ When the historian peeps across the fence he sees his neighbours, in literature, perhaps, or sociology, just as complacent in relying on historical platitudes which are naive, simplistic or obsolete. New Perspectives on the Past represents not a reaction against specialization, which would be a romantic absurdity, but an attempt to come to terms with it. The authors, of course, are specialists, and their thought and conclusions rest on the foundation of distinguished professional research in different periods and fields. Here they will viii Editor’s Preface free themselves, as far as it is possible, from the restraints of subject, region and period within which they ordinarily and necessarily work, to discuss problems simply as problems, and not as ‘history’ or ‘politics’ or ‘economics’. They will write for specialists, because we are all specialists now, and for laymen, because we are all laymen. A series with such a goal could be inaugurated by no author more apt than Ernest Gellner, and by no subject more fitting than natio nalism, whose force in shaping and reshaping the modern world is so obvious, and which yet remains obdurately alien and incompre hensible to those who are not possessed by it. Gellner’s lucid command of the intellectual resources of several fields - philosophy, sociology, intellectual history and social anthropology are prominent here - has produced an explanation of nationalism which could not have been devised by an expert in any single one of them, and which makes it, for the first time, historically and humanly intelligible. R.I. Moore Acknowledgements The writing of this book has benefited enormously from the moral and material support from my wife Susan and my secretary Gay Woolven. The penultimate draft was valuably criticized by my son David. The number of people from whose ideas and information I benefited over the years, whether in agreement or disagreement, is simply too large to be listed, though the extent of my debt, conscious and other, must be enormous. But needless to say, only I may be blamed for the contentions found in this book. Ernest Gellner
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