Nationalism
In 1983, Gellner published Nations and Nationalism.
For Gellner, "nationalism is primarily a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent" (1983, p. 1). Nationalism only appeared, and, Gellner argues, became a sociological necessity in the modern world. In previous times ("the agro-literate" stage of history) rulers had little incentive to impose cultural homogeneity on the ruled. But in modern society, work becomes technical. One must operate a machine, and as such one must learn. There is a need for impersonal, context-free communication and a high degree of cultural standardisation.
Furthermore, industrial society is underlined by the fact that there is perpetual growth - employment types vary and new skills must be learned. Thus, generic employment training precedes specialised job training. On a territorial level, there is competition for the overlapping catchment areas (e.g. Alsace-Lorraine). To maintain its grip on resources, and its survival and progress, the state and culture must for these reasons be congruent. Nationalism therefore is a necessity.
Criticisms of Gellner's theory:
It is too functionalist. Critics charge that Gellner explains the phenomenon with reference to the eventual historical outcome - industrial society could not 'function' without nationalism (Tambini 1996) .
It misreads the relationship between nationalism and industrialisation (Smith 1998).
It fails to account for nationalism in non-industrial society and resurgences of nationalism in post-industrial societies (Smith 1998).
It cannot explain the passions generated by nationalism. Why should anyone fight and die for his country? (Connor 1993)
It fails to take into account the role of war and the military in fostering both cultural homogenization and nationalism, ignoring in particular the relationship between militarism and compulsory education (Conversi 2007).
Anderson defined a nation as "an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign".[1] An imagined community is different from an actual community because it is not (and cannot be) based on quotidian face-to-face interaction between its members. Instead, members hold in their minds a mental image of their affinity. As Anderson puts it, a nation "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion".[1]
According to Benedict Anderson, creation of imagined communities became possible because of what he calls "print-capitalism". Capitalist entrepreneurs printed their books and media in the vernacular (instead of exclusive script languages, such as Latin) in order to maximize circulation. As a result, readers speaking various local dialects became capable of understanding each other, and a common discourse emerged.
Anderson argued that the first European nation-states were thus formed around their "national print-languages". This is also a reason that nations have "finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations".[1]
Anderson also tried to explain why nations aspire to have their own states:
[The nation] is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the [direct relationship] between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state. (pp. 6-7)
Finally, a nation is not only "imagined", it is imagined as a community because "regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings."[1]
The main causes of the nationalism that derives from the existence of imagined community are the reduced import of privileged access to particular script languages (such as Latin) because of mass vernacular literacy; the movement to abolish the ideas of rule by divine right and hereditary monarchy; and the emergence of printing press capitalism — all phenomena occurring with the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Context of Anderson's theory
Benedict Anderson falls into the "historicist" or "modernist" school of nationalism along with Ernest Gellner and Eric Hobsbawm in that he posits that nations and nationalism are products of modernity and have been created as means to political and economic ends. This school stands in opposition to the primordialists, who believe that nations, if not nationalism, have existed since early human history. Imagined communities can be seen as a form of social constructionism on a par with Edward Said's concept of imagined geographies.
In contrast to Gellner and Hobsbawm, Anderson is not hostile to the idea of nationalism nor does he think that nationalism is obsolescent in a globalizing world. Anderson values the utopian element in nationalism.[2]
Anthony D. Smith states that even when nations are the product of modernity, it is possible to find ethnic elements that survive in modern nations. Ethnic groups are different from nations. Nations are the result of a triple revolution that begins with the development of capitalism and leads to a bureaucratic and cultural centralization along with a loss of power by the Catholic Church. Since Smith considers nations as the product of modernity, he falls into the "modernity" school.
Eric Hobsbawm argues that the nation is the product of nationalism, instead of nationalism's being an effect of the nation's mythical original existence. The modern nation was created by the unification of various people into a common society or community, which takes the 19th century nation-state form, forged out of disciplinary institutions such as the school, the army or the factory.
Nationalism
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