Historical+Narratives+and+the+Meaning+of+Nationalism

Lloyd Kramer, “Historical Narratives and the Meaning of Nationalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58, no. 3 (July 1997): 535-45. Summarized by Efe Nationalism is “both an ideology and a political movement which holds the nation and sovereign nation-state to be crucial indwelling values, and which manages to mobilize the political will of a people or a large section of the population." (P. Alter) There are five broad patterns of historical analysis of nationalism:  1) Nationalism as modernism:  - Nationalism seems to be a constitutive element of modernity (Greenfeld).  - Nationalism is based on modern historical knowledge, such as intellectual, cultural, economic, social, and economic.  - Intellectual origins: Nationalism is a state of mind, an act of consciousness (Kohn).   - Nationalism is an intellectual response to the political, social, and cultural problems of integration and legitimacy of the 18th century. (Kohn)    - Cultural origins: Nationalism is based on the redefinition of identities resulted from cultural transformation that evolved along with the new technologies for distributing information (Anderson) - Economic origins: Nationalism is embedded in the history of industrialization and capitalism - Nationalism for Hobs-bawm, as for Gellner, is therefore a powerful political and cultural expression of modernizing economic processes that have destroyed older social hierarchies, generated new social anxieties, and produced new legitimating ideologies. (Hobswan, Gellner) - Social origins: Nationalism is created by social groups who are unhappy about their lack of social influence/worried about their nation’s inferiority (Greenfeld). 2) Nationalism as a religion: - Because the origins of nations are mystical, filled with mythical figures.  - Nations expect individuals to make sacrifices for common interest (Renan)  - There is a faith in a nation’s mission, and destiny. (Hayes)  3) Nationalism as a Construction of Language and Literature - Nation is a group of people who can communicate more effectively over a wider range of subjects (Deutsch). - Newspapers and novels play an important role in creating imagined communities (Anderson). - National languages are the essence of human identity (Kedourie) - Meaning of nation is constructed through narrative (Bhabha). - Asian nationalism is a derivative discourse (Chatterjee). 4) Nationalism as a discourse of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity: - European nationalism emerged together with the new ideas about social proper behavior in Europe – including sexuality and marriage (Mosse)   - Modern nations evolve out of "culture-rich communities" that retain "the sentiments, beliefs and myths of ethnic origins and bonds" (Smith)   5) Nationalism as Categories of Historical Analysis: (We are talking about categories like good/bad; eastern/western) - Cultural nations are based on jointly experienced cultural heritage. (Meinkecke) o Cultural nations: Germany - Political nations are based on the unifying force of a common political history and constitution (Meinkecke) o Political nations: France and England - Western nationalism is about individual liberty and rational cosmopolitanism. Asian nationalism tended ‘towards a contrary development (Kohn) - Alter, Brubaker, and Greenfeld modifies and uses this Western/Eastern dichotomy in nationalism. - Most comprehensive one is Greenfeld (with regard to categorization) o England, good nationalism, brings in civil liberties and politics is based on practical experience. o Germany (German Romantics), bad nationalism. (Again, the author does not explicitly say bad nationalism here, but German nationalism is a case for not the good nationalism, and Greenfeld claims Germany was ready for the holocaust from the moment its national identity was created – Efe) § German intellectuals therefore conceived of their nation as a higher reality of philosophy and language which manifested itself in the German race
 * Main point: ** Summarizing the main debates on nationalism, and recurring themes in the historical literature. Nationalism is not defined properly, and several scholars use different approaches to create their own interpretations of the concept, but they usually stick to historical narratives in their endeavors.