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Chris Cherry
Major Research Interests
When considering the work of a Renaissance man with such varied interests as
Ernest Gellner, it is difficult to narrow down the interests of a scholar such as this to a few subjects. Gellner was an incredibly prolific writer, writing hundreds of articles, books, and reviews between 1951 and 1998. Early in his career he wrote on linguistic idealism, gaining fame and notoriety among philosophers. His fascination with anthropology began in 1954, when he chose to go on a mountaineering expedition to the
Atlas Mountains of Morocco instead of the Himalayas. He made this choice in part because he thought that the recent creation of the state of Israel would cause tension in the Muslim world, and he wanted to learn more about it. Although Saints of the Atlas, the book that came out of his only traditional fieldwork experience, was chiefly about the
Berber peoples of the Atlas Mountains, it was an early influence on his interests of both nationalism and Muslim society. (Davis 1)
From the mid-1960s, Ernest Gellner became interested in the social structure and political structure of the Soviet Union and its associated states. He was present in
Moscow in 1989, the time at which time perestroika took hold in the Soviet Union. His interest manifested itself in a lengthy study of the changes made in the literary and academic communities of Moscow, and he contributed greatly to anthropology as a discipline by bringing the attention of western social scientists to the body of work written in the Russian language. (Davis 2)
Although Soviet society and Marxism, Islam, and philosophy were among Ernest
Gellner’s interests, he is also associated with the concept and study of nationalism.
Gellner posited that the emergence of states required nationalism as a way of gaining the

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Chris Cherry homogeneity needed to become a prosperous nation. Education, then, is a way for the nation to foster nationalism and cause it to grow. As feelings of nationalism grow, the people of the nation have more thought and morality in common, leading to industrialization and prosperity. (Haddad 108)
Survey of Publications
The pen of Ernest Gellner never rested from the 1950s to the 1990s. To survey each of his many books, articles, and reviews would take a book itself. I will instead mention and briefly describe some of his more important scholarly books.
Gellner’s first book published was Words and Things: A Critical Account of
Linguistic Philosophy and a Study in Ideology. Linguistic philosophy was the prevailing view of the time at Oxford, and Gellner found it without adequate explanation, and its practitioners without adequate internal analysis, in this book. (17-18) The chief goal of this type of philosophy was to carefully analyze language, which would in turn cause philosophical problems to disappear. (rev. of Words 671) It was this book that exposed the world to Gellner, either in fame or notoriety.
Ernest Gellner turned his eye towards the concept of industrialism in his next book, Thought and Change, published in 1964. He determined that in the immediate future, industrialism would grow in the developed countries rapidly, and then become transmitted to developing countries. In these countries, nationalism would provide a ready bed for this new industrialism to grow. The theme of nationalism would influence
Gellner’s works for the rest of his life. (“Juggernaut’s” 1)

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In 1969, Ernest Gellner published his only real hands-on ethnography, Saints of the Atlas. During his fieldwork with these Berber tribes, Gellner studied social structure and dispute resolution, as well as the Berber way of life in general. His analysis also focused on the effect of French rule over these fiercely independent tribesmen. (“Islamic
1)
Contemporary Thought and Politics, a collection of essays written by Ernest
Gellner between 1958 and 1973, he addresses the notion that people cannot be consistent when dealing with the complexities of the modern world. The concept of democracy is addressed, and Gellner says that although it is becoming the dominant political norm, it is doing poorly in certain transitional societies. Subjects as diverse as the Berbers of the
Atlas Mountains, democracy in France, and the leadership of the London School of
Economics are used to illustrate his points. (“The self-defeated” 1)
In 1974, Ernest Gellner published Legitimation of Belief. This work focused on the differences between modern knowledge-based philosophy and older philosophies based on being. In this rather philosophical work that also draws on anthropology,
Gellner uses these differences to explain the emergence of scientific thought. (Korner 1)
Ernest Gellner published Muslim Society in 1981, another work dealing with the
Berber people of the Atlas Mountains. This is not particularly an ethnographic work, but is more a treatise on the social and political structure of Islam as a whole. He applies the concept of mechanical solidarity to Berber tribal life, and also addresses the differences in ideology between rural and urban towns. (Berque 1)
In the book Nations and Nationalism, Gellner speaks of the origins and reasons behind the concept of nationalism. He states that nationalism is the key to a society’s

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In the book Plough, Sword, and Book, Ernest Gellner addresses the concept of the three-age system, where societies pass through a hunter/gatherer phase, an agricultural age, then into an industrial age. He focuses on the agricultural stage, and addresses the importance of the creation of writing and food storage for growth of society. The idea that transition from the agrarian to the industrial is due in large part to the growth of
Protestant literacy is also addressed. (Weber 1-2)
In Reason And Culture, Gellner looks at the history of philosophy, comparing rationalist and anti-rationalist thinkers and their traditions. He compares Descartes,
Hegel, and Marx as rationalists with Weber and Freud among others, as anti-rationalist thinkers. In general, Gellner shows that science is a universal truth unrelated to culture.
(Rogers 1)
Gellner pursues this line of thought in his next book, Post-Modernism, Reason, and Religion. He positions himself as a Rationalist Fundamentalist, as compared to the religious fundamentalism present in the Muslim world, and the pitfalls of postmodernism and relativism. In this book, he attacks this relativism head-on.
Anthropology and Politics: Revolutions in the Sacred Grove was published in
1995. Gellner uses this collection of essays to address varying topics, including a paper about another Central European anthropologist, Alois Musil. He writes more in this book on his position of rationalism opposed to relativism, and the role of nationalism and the nation-state in the modern world. (Giddens)