Lecture 6 Nation and state Maps * Maps represent the world as a world of `nation-states' * Changes in state-borders, changes in nations? * Czechoslovaks? Yugoslavs? Who are the Bosnians and who the Bosniaks? ... `Nation-state' * The modern `nation-state' owes its current predominance to the historical fact that its Western European antecedents were militarily and economically so successful -- an `example' that others followed. * The predominance and ongoing persistence of the term is indebted to the two hundred years-long state-building process of Western Europe. `Nation-state' * The existence of the state is instrumental to the modernist theory of nationalism (e.g. Gellner, 1992). * However, if one is to assume an ethnicist idea of nation (Hutchinson, 1994; Smith, 1995), the `nation-state' is almost a fiction because most of the world's states are ethnically or nationally heterogeneous. `Nation-state' * Walker Connor: only 12 of 132 states he examined were sufficiently ethnically and culturally homogeneous to be `justifiably' described as nation-states. * In Connor's view, nation-states "are those relatively rare situations, characterized by an extremely homogeneous population, where a nation has its own state". `Nation-state' * Giddens: a nation "only exists when a state has a unified administrative reach over the territory over which its sovereignty is claimed" * the term `nation-state' implies that the cultural and the political correspond; that the `people' who are ruled by the institutions of the state are culturally (ethnically) homogeneous -- when in fact: * only nations which have their own state can be described as `nation-states' and the reality is that these are very few * the ideas of `nation' and `state' have been so successfully merged that they are usually treated as synonymous Nations and states * Multiethnic and multinational states (Belgium; UK; Nigeria; Canada; Spain...) * `Nations without states' (Guibernau - Catalans); `stateless' (McCrone - Scots); `small nations' or `non-dominant ethnic groups' (Hroch -- most EE nations) * `Nation-states': Japan? Iceland? Nation as ethnic majority * Creating the `nation-state' (historical examples, e.g. France) * `Nationalising' nationalism (Brubaker): are post-communist states specifically nationalising or can we link them to `nation-building' processes of the `civic' West at earlier periods in history? (classical top-down homogenisation of peoples) Nationalism and nation-building * Modernisation, centralisation, industrialisation * Educational system, bureaucracy, military * High cultures vs. low cultures (Gellner) * `Civic' nationhood, citizenship, territoriality Minorities * Ethnic and national minorities within states * A different view on national minority: Herrenvolk democracy (Pierre L. van den Berghe): pre-1994 apartheid South Africa; the state of Israel * Preservation of minority national identities: multiculturalism Readings for next lecture: * Hobsbawm, Eric J. "The Nation as Invented Tradition", in Hutchinson & Smith (1994) Nationalism. pp. 76-83 * Schöpflin, George "The Functions of Myth and a Taxonomy of Myths", in Hosking & Schöpflin (1997) Myths and Nationhood, pp. 28-35 -- if you can find the book * Smith, Anthony D. (1999) Myths and Memories of the Nation. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 57-58, 63-70 -- if you can find the book * Hobsbawm, Eric J. "Introduction: Inventing Traditions", in Hobsbawm & Ranger (1993) The Invention of Tradition, pp. 1-14 * David McCrone (1998) Sociology of Nationalism. Chapter 3 * A. D. Smith (1998) Nationalism and Modernism. pp. 41-46, 117-120,190-192 * Case-study: Solonari, Vladimir (2002): "Narrative, Identity, State: History Teaching in Moldova" East European Politics and Societies Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 414-445 * Pdf files