3/1/2009 - MODERNITY DEBATES on DISCUSSING ORIGIN of NATIONALISM
As one of the today’s most popular discussion topics, there are several studies on Nationalism. Especially, the debates on understanding a person’ s state of belonging to a community, or starting point of people’ s national allegiance still remains undecipherable. In order to find answers, we need to know the beginning of the process. So this paper contains a brief analysis on emergence of nationalism and quests whether it is a modern phenomenon or not. Throughout the paper, I will try to analyse these discussions in the light of reputable scholars’s writings of this topic. Afterwards, I will try to find out the importance of this question in understanding nationalism. Before I started to prepare this paper, I made a mini questionnaire to the people around me and asked them whether nationalism is modern or not. The answers being generally “no” led me think on how the definition of “nationalism” and “modernity” had gradually underwent a change from their real terms. Different than it is commonly believed in Turkey, nationalism is not equal to aggressiveness in country love expressions. Indeed, it is a modern phenomenon, a product of modernist era, where “modernist” is not referring an individual characteristic. Even if the scholars or intellectuals are not claiming exactly the same background of nationalism, most of them are in agreement on modern opening of nationalism. According to Ernest Gellner, one of the important factors influential in nationalist sentiment is its relationship with the existence of industrial community. He claims that nationalism and nation are the product of the homogeneous culture, community and political unity whereas homogeneity in the culture can be observed only in the industrialized communities having horizontal relationship between people and equality. We can conclude that nationalism is an intelligence movement in the modern states and the culture that comes with nationalism is a modern elitist culture; high culture, mass education. On the other hand, the social organization of agrarian society is not favorable at all to the nationalist principle, in the aspects of political and cultural units and school transmitted nature of culture within each political unit. In modern communities, the reason why communities are homogeneous is the interchangible lifestyle they have. This results into homogeneity which leads nationalism. Therefore, nationalism is not primordial, it has a history and starts with the industrialization. In other words; it is modern. MODERNITY ╙ Industrialization → homogeneity → nationalism → nation ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ nationalist sentiments Nationalist sentiments are exist in primordial times but appears as a result of homogeneity in the culture, like sleeping beauty, waiting for someone to wake her up. Benedict Anderson does not agree with Gellner’ s flow, as he claims that nations are not a kind of invention but an imaginary phenomenon; an imagined political community both inherently limited and sovereign. The reason for him to define nation as “imagined” is the fact that even in the smallest nations, members of a them 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. He refers the emergence of these artefact communities through the agency of invention of print capitalism. So, according to Anderson, reforms in print technology facilitated printing holy book in vernacular and this advancement ceased the monopoly of Latin. He also emphasizes the decline in religious believes coincide with the emergence of nationalism since these believes have similarities on interpreting world, and nationalism replaced religiousness. Thus, the coalition between Protestantism and print capitalism quickly created large new reading publics and mobilized them for politico religious purposes. This resulted decline of the imagined community of Christendom MODERNITY ╙ Print capitalism → cease in Latin monopoly → imagined ↔ nationalist sentiments ↑ ↑ communities
Decrease in religiousness (nations) Reading from the same language creates imagination and replaces religious sentiments in the form of nationalism. Like Anderson, Anthony Smith emphasizes the collective characteristics of national identity and claims that it arises within a nation. However, he claims that nationalism is formed as a long and gradual evolution of ethnie -the generic name for culture, history, geography,.. etc for a specific ethnic groups-, which is perrenial and extends back to the beginning of humanity. According to him, nationalism is modern, however the nations that are constituted by ethnics do not have to be modern since in time, nations gain modern features and raise nationalist communities. As a requirement, ethnicity is important to have nation. MODERNITY ╙ Ethnicity (myths and symbols)→ nationalism (territorial or ethnic nationalism) ↑ └→ nations Nationalism as an ideology and movement is a phenomenon that dates from the later eighteenth century, while a specifically national sentiment can be discerned little earlier than the late fifteenth or sixteenth centuries in western Europe. In brief, according to Smith, nation is a purely modern phenomenon, a product of strictly modern developments like capitalism, bureaucracy and secular utilitarianism. According to Liah Greenfeld, nationalism is an umbrella and lies at the basis of this world. In order to explain the emergence of idea of nation, she uses zigzag pattern of semantic change which indicates the sovereignty as the result of transformation in the structural conditions. Besides why and how the nationalism emerged, she also quested how natioalism was transformed from one society to another within patterns of culture. There are 3 types of nationalism in her analysis; individualistic civic (like in England), collectivistic civic (like in France) and collectivistic ethnic (like in Russia or Germay). She claims that although the territorial, religious, linguistic and political identity exist before the national identity is formed, nationalism related to nations, not all communities. Because, ethnic is not equal to nation, such as in US case, and national identity is not generic but it is specific to each nation. Territorial, → nations → national identity & nationalism religious, (specific to each nation) linguistic, political identity └ MODERNITY Rather than define nationalism by its modernity, modernity as defined by nationalism. (industrialization, secularization, rationalism, capitalism, democracy, etc.) The original modern idea of the nation emerged in 16th century England which was the first nation in the world. When first appeared in England, it had sovereign meaning. However, as it is imported to other countries, it gained particularistic meaning, which Greenfeld called it “transvaluation”. In the nations that nationalism arrived, equality between members of the community phenomenon constituted and this new tendency became a answer to status crisis of 18th century Europe. Thus, people from every class felt that they have a chance to govern when they could prove doing it better. Therefore, invention, importation of ideas and its ability to solve the crises and national identity is adopted. So the nation is the constitutive element of modernity. National identity is simply the characteristic of nations, while nationalism is a product or reflection of major components of modernization. In conclusion, according to the studies of scholars and intellectuals, nationalism and modernization are directly linked to each other. After Medieval era, every kind of reform in human’ s life contributed to the advancement of nationalistic sentiments. Especially industrialization period and secondary developments in the world pave the way towards nationalism. As mentioned, there are claims that nationalism is a feeling that meets the same needs of human for religion and replaces it. Even if this may be theoretically true, there is not any significant indication proving this. This can be interpreted as the low level of correlation between religion and modernity. It is obvious that there are less people who think that nationalism is modern than people who do not so. This common delusion of understanding nationalism within public results into abstinence from nationalist sentiments. Indeed, people should not consider this phonemenon only in a framework of violance, but also within its esteemed features. Because all those emotions do not corrupt mankind, in contrast, they enrich civilizations.
E.Gellner, “Nations and Natioalism”, 1983, p.40 B.Anderson, “Imagined Communities”, 1991, p.6 A.Smith, “The Ethnic Origins of Nations”, 1986, p.6 L.Greenfeld, “Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity”, 1992, p.10 |
