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Title: Nations and Nationalism by Ernest Gellner ISBN: 0-8014-9263-7 Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr Pub. Date: December, 1983 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Siren Call of Nationalism
Comment: A densely-written and concise book, as befitting Gellner's style, which is not usual in English writing. There is for example, a paucity in examples, unlike (say) Benedict Anderson's "The Imagined Community", another modern work on nationalism.
As an Irishman, I can see that parts of Gellner's thesis does fit Ireland. I can see how Irish Nationalism developed in the last century from the aspirations of working-class and middle-class townsmen adopting a metropolitan culture, and shifting away from their former communal and rural bonds. However, I am less sure that some historical memory did not play any part in this, the struggles of post-Reformation Ireland to maintain some independence from the English crown in the 17th century must have had its own influence. However, the arrival of French Revolutionary ideology at the end of the 18th century set the stage definitely for Nationalism, which at the time allied itself with democracy/ republicanism, possibly because as national communities were majorities in their own territories, these ideologies lent themselves to the nationalist case.
This is a facinating subject, and this book is a major contribution.
Rating: 5
Summary: classic modernist account of nationalism
Comment: Truly one of the most important books ever written about nationalism, this is also one of the few modernist accounts of nationalism that ages well. While this book was published in 1983, it is basically an expanded version of a chapter from Gellner's earlier _Thought and Change_ (1964) with some alterations. However, even 36 years later his thesis is still as strong as ever: nationalism is a result of the transformation from agrarianism to industrialization. I'll try to summarize his thesis briefly.
Gellner describes the agrarian society as one where power is concentrated at the top with a complex division of labor and an emphasis on informality and intimacy. Basically each group lives in their own happy little world cut off from the rest.
But then things begin to change. The transformation to modernity involves a huge number of changes in society: the peasants have to pick up and move to the city for work. There mobility, formality (the 'Diploma Disease') and a universalised high culture replace intimacy, informality and various low cultures, and the peasants feel alienated (a touch of Marx?). The intelligentsia of the peasant group then decide to save their low culture by turning it into a high culture, which can only survive through state-supported education. Thus the peasant people decide to return home, seceed to form a new state and - presto - they've become a nation. This part of the story is obviously the violent part: Gellner claims that things will get better in late industrialism, where we'll have 'muted nationalism' after all those secessions have taken place.
While simplistic, there is a lot of truth to this story, which is well documented in the large number of nations which emerged in this way, especially in eastern Europe. However, Gellner neglects several things, most importantly what basis these peasants have for feeling like they have something in common besides their class. He also relies too much on the structural changes in society - nothing is left up to individuals or even groups, since nationalism is socially, not ideologically determined. Therefore the peasants themselves have no say in any of this: they're just riding the wave of history (Marx again?).
Yet for its faults, this book is still a classic: it has influenced all other writers on nationalism and will continue to do so for quite some time. Definitely a worthy read.
Rating: 5
Summary: OUT OF THE IRON CAGE
Comment: The importance of this book stretches beyond academic theorizing: it should be re-marketed for mass consumption. Gellner's gifts are easy access and aptness. In a globalized world advancing toward force-fed monoculture, never before have the issues of defining and understanding nationalism demanded such focus. Nations and Nationalism, first published in 1983, forms part of a provocative, important overview of the human condition (to be found in Plough, Sword & Book, 1988) that essentially argues for a no-choice cultural pluralism and (key concept) de-fetishization of land. In Gellner's last work (Nationalism, London, 1997) published posthumously, he accepts the cage of existential anguish that dictates nationalism but insists on scientific optimism: "Better to try and deal with the conditions which engender nationalism than to preach at its victims and beg them to refrain from feeling what, in their circumstances, it is only too natural to feel." There is, beyond academe, compassion and prescience in Nations and Nationalism, and urgency in its follow-up. Faced with the biophysical issues of global survival, the virulence of modern weaponry, the accelerator of IT, we are commanded - at firesides, as well as campuses - to think again of the dangers of ethnic conflict and misunderstandings among nations and men.
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Title: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson ISBN: 0860915468 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: July, 1991 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Nations and Nationalism since 1780 : Programme, Myth, Reality by E. J. Hobsbawm ISBN: 0521439612 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: January, 1993 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: National Identity (Ethnonationalism in Comparative Perspective) by Anthony D. Smith ISBN: 0874172047 Publisher: Univ of Nevada Pr Pub. Date: May, 1993 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Nationalism by John Hutchinson, Anthony D. Smith ISBN: 0192892606 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: February, 1995 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Invention of Tradition by Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger ISBN: 0521437733 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: September, 1992 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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