Nationalism
Lecture 3: Theories I
Prof. Lars-Erik Cederman
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS)
Seilergraben 49, Room G.2
lcederman@ethz.ch
http://www.icr.ethz.ch/teaching/nationalism
Assistant: Kimberly Sims, CIS, Room E 3, k-sims@northwestern.edu
Theories of nationalism:
Main Debates
Nationalist
primordialism
Essentialism
Perennialism
Anti-nationalist
ideology
Constructivism
Modernism
Essentialism
Cultural
Raw Material
Articulation,
Rediscovery
Political
Identities
1:1
Ethnic cores
See Cederman, “Nationalism and Bounded Integration”
Essentialism
• Essentialism claims that nations are based on
ancient cultural “raw material” and that there
is a one-to-one correspondence between
ethnic cores and national identities.
• Variations:
– Primordialism holds that the nation is natural
– Perennialism contends that the nation is pre-modern
– Methodological essentialism reifies the nation for analytical
reasons
Constructivism
Cultural
Raw Material
Ethnic boundaries
Selection &
Mobilization
Political
Identities
Constructivism
• Constructivism argues that national
identities are actively invented and
modified by nationalist entrepreneurs
selecting and mobilizing cultural traits
for political purposes.
• Variations:
– Instrumentalism
– Bounded-institutionalist theories
Bounded Institutionalism
Cultural
Raw Material
Institutional
“lock-in”
Political
Identities
Gellner’s constructivism
• Targets:
– Nationalist primordialism: “Sleeping Beauty”
– Perennialism: “Dark Gods Theory”
– Anti-nationalist ideologies (Marxism &
Liberalism): “Wrong-Address Theory”
• Gellner’s response:
– Nations are not natural
– Nations are not old
– Nationalism is an integrated part of
modernity and cannot be wished away
Ernest Gellner
Gellner’s philosophy of history
Pre-Agrarian
Society
Stateless society
Agrarian
Society
“Agro-literate” polity
with horizontal elite
on top and insulated
peasant communities
at the bottom
Industrial
Society
Vertically integrated largescale society unified by
culture
The logic of nationalism
• High culture replaces structure
(Thought and Change, 1964)
• Key to high culture: educational
system
• “Not the guillotine, but the doctorat
d’état is the main tool and symbol of
state power. The monopoly of
legitimate education is more important,
more central than the monopoly of
legitimate violence.”
Gellner’s typology
Center
No education
Education
Periphery
No
education
Education
Pre-nationalist
situation
Ethnic
nationalism
Diaspora
nationalism
Classical liberal
nationalism