Nation-States and Nationalisms

Organization, Ideology and Solidarity

Sinisa Malesevic

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780745653396
  9780745653389
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780745672069
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Despite many predictions made over the last two hundred years that nation-states and nationalism are transient phenomena that will eventually fade away, the historical record and contemporary events show otherwise. Nationalism still remains the most popular, potent and resilient ideological discourse and the nation-state the only legitimate mode of territorial rule.

This innovative and concise book provides an in-depth analysis of the processes involved in the emergence, formation, expansion and transformation of nation-states and nationalisms as they are understood today. Sinisa Malesevic examines the historical predecessors of nation-states (from hunting and gathering bands, through city-states, to modernizing empires) and explores the historical rise of organizational and ideological powers that eventually gave birth to the modern nation-state. The book also investigates the ways in which nationalist ideologies were able to envelop the microcosm of family, kin, residential and friendship networks. Other important topics covered along the way include: the relationships between nationalism and violence; the routine character of nationalist experience; and the impacts of globalization and religious revivals on the transformation of nationalisms and nation-states.

This insightful analysis of nationalisms and nation-states through time and space will appeal to scholars and students in sociology, politics, history, anthropology, international relations and geography.

1

The Salience of Nationalism

Introduction

Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon in 1969 was a momentous occasion in human history. This event signified the exceptional ingenuity and determination of humankind, whose representatives were now able to develop such advanced science, technology and organization to reach, and eventually conquer, outer space. The historic landing was seen as a tremendous success for all of humanity, and Armstrong’s utterance about the ‘giant leap for mankind’ reflected this well. Despite intense cold war animosities, the event became a source of pride throughout the world.

Such universally shared feelings were just as evident in 2010 when thirty-three miners in Copiapo, Chile, became trapped 700 metres below the surface. Their ordeal and the struggles to save their lives quickly developed into a global event where billions around the world watched the unfolding of this potential tragedy on their TV screens and sincerely empathized with the miners’ suffering and the emotional turmoil that their families went through. The eventual successful rescue of all the miners resulted in globally shared joy and pride, with human resolve and ingenuity as well as technological and organizational supremacy again celebrated all over the world.

There is no doubt that these two events had strong universalist appeal; they both symbolized the power of human perseverance and inventiveness and they both provided an emotional drama with which most human beings could easily identify. Yet behind this veil of universalism, the two events were also firmly couched in the images and language of nationalism. Once on the moon Neil Armstrong did not plant the flag of the UN or of his home town of Wapakoneta, Ohio. There was no discussion of whether it would be appropriate to erect the family crests of the Armstrongs or Aldrins, the symbols of the Apollo programme team or the flag of NASA, Armstrong’s employers. Instead it was beyond any question that the only flag that must be raised was the flag of a specific nation-state: the USA. In addition, it was not accidental that the lunar landing module that took the astronauts to the moon was named Eagle, the American national symbol, whereas the command spacecraft that was waiting in orbit to take the astronauts back to Earth was called Columbia, an American symbol of liberty and justice.

Although the world’s public shared Armstrong’s joy, there was no doubt that the conquest of the moon was first and foremost an American victory: a sign of the technological, political, economic and ultimately cultural superiority of the American nation-state. This was obvious in the newspaper, radio and TV reports of the event in the USA and abroad. Since then the moon landing is commemorated in school textbooks and public ceremonies as a victory of the American people and its state: ‘the US textbooks of the time never failed to depict the moon landing without [sic] noting that it was an American achievement’ (Drori et al. 2003: 142).

For all its global human appeal, the rescue of Chilean miners was thoroughly framed in nationalist discourses. ‘When the miners were discovered alive, their first spoken message to the world was the Chilean national anthem sung in unison. From that day onward, there were scantly few images of the site and the rescue process that did not include a Chilean flag’ (Centeno et al. 2013: 279). The tents of miners’ families in the makeshift tent city that sprang up around the site of the accident, Campamento Esperanza (Camp Hope), were all decorated with the Chilean flag. The families erected individual shrines for all thirty-three stranded miners that displayed thirty-two Chilean flags and one Bolivian flag, one to represent each miner. The rescue capsule was also painted in the colours of the Chilean flag. After the successful rescue, the informal leader of the miners, Luis Urzua, greeted his son and then hugged the president of Chile, Sebastian Piñera, saying: ‘I’ve delivered to you this shift of workers, as we agreed I would.’ The president replied ‘I gladly receive your shift, because you completed your duty, leaving last like a good captain … You are not the same after this, and Chile won’t be the same either’ (Padget 2010). Urzua brought up the large Chilean flag that was displayed in the mine chamber during the rescue, and after all thirty-three miners were evacuated from the mine the rescuers put up a large banner reading ‘Misión cumplida Chile’ (‘Mission accomplished Chile’). President Piñera gave a speech at the rescue site in which he praised Chile and depicted the rescue as a heroic victory of all Chileans, emphasizing that he was ‘proud to be the president of all Chileans’. He also referred to the recent bicentennial celebration of Chile’s sovereignty and praised the national unity of Chileans as displayed during the miners’ accident.

What one can see here is how something that initially was understood to be a deeply personal, and thus universal, experience suddenly became a nationally framed and nationally experienced event. The private tragedies and joys of families, friends and neighbours were gradually infused with nation-centric discourses, and what at one point was only a local, micro-incident was eventually transformed into a nationalist project with global resonance. Once the accident was reframed as a national calamity it became a litmus test of Chilean national endurance. As clearly stated on the banner, the event was articulated as a national mission of Chile and for Chile, which had to be accomplished successfully. To rescue miners meant not only to save thirty-three lives but also to show to the world that the Chilean nation-state was sovereign, ordered and technologically and organizationally superior, while its citizens were unified and full of solidarity and compassion for each other. In this context, the mass media emphasized the internal solidarity of the trapped miners, who, reflecting the democratic and national character of the Chilean state, had prevented conflicts by helping each other and by adopting majority-vote decision making during their ordeal. In Urzua’s own words: ‘You just have to speak the truth and believe in democracy … everything was voted on … we were 33 men, so 16 plus one was a majority’ (Carroll and Franklin 2010). The imagery, the rhetoric and the ritualism that accompanied the entire event successfully, and apparently unproblematically, fused the sentiments and emotions of those who were directly affected by unfolding adversity, such as miners and their families and friends, with those from the rest of Chile who had never been to Copiapo and who were unlikely ever to meet anyone from this small, remote mining outpost. This constant interplay between the personal and universal on the one hand and the national/nationalist on the other was clearly visible in Luis Urzua’s affectionate embrace of a man, President Sebastian Piñera, he had never met before and who received more attention from Urzua than did some of Urzua’s closest family members and friends. Furthermore, instead of first contacting his employers, the San Esteban Mining Company which owned the mine, it was the president of Chile who was addressed. The brief verbal exchange between Urzua and the president reflected the understanding that since the rescue of the miners was conceived as a national mission it was the president of the nation-state who had the ultimate authority over this operation. It is no accident that this highly hierarchical, ritual exchange of greetings between the two civilians closely resembled military discourse, as the speakers utilized soldierly and bureaucratic terms such as ‘captain’, ‘duty’ and ‘delivery of tasks’. In the nation-centric articulation of the event the rescue of the miners became a heroic, national event that acquired recognizable features of a military action: a courageous, superhuman struggle against unprecedented adversity with expressed willingness to make sacrifices and perform one’s duty in the name of a specific nation-state.

Although the successful rescue of so many miners and the landing on the moon are unique events, there is nothing unique in the way these events were ideologically and organizationally articulated. Despite their global and personal significance and appeal, they were quickly transformed into national events. Armstrong’s moon landing was a global occasion but it stayed first and foremost an American affair. The rescue of the miners was a local incident with global ramifications, yet the event always remained a matter of the responsibility, sentiment and prestige of the Chilean nation-state. In both of these cases, as in so many others all over the world today, the personal, the local and even the global are often subsumed into the national. In the contemporary world, many tragic, heroic, dramatic or joyous happenings that affect larger groups of people tend to be framed in nation-centric or nationalist terms. Every time there is a plane crash, the first thing expected to be reported is how many of ‘our co-nationals’ have been killed. Olympic gold medals are won by specific, named individuals and small teams but they are habitually celebrated as national victories. Hurricanes, earthquakes and floods do not stop at the borders of nation-states, yet long-term relief efforts, long-lasting popular sympathies and protracted commitment to years of rebuilding and recovering often do. Even though the scientific discoveries, artistic accomplishments and heroic achievements of exceptional individuals are recognized all over the world, these individual successes are typically interpreted as enhancing the national prestige of specific nation-states. Why are we inclined to mourn the deaths of our ‘co-nationals’ much more than those of inhabitants of other nation-states? Why do we celebrate the victories of ‘our’ Olympians, scientists and artists and remain indifferent or hostile to the victories of others?

Despite some prevalent views that see the contemporary world as an interdependent global hub where advanced technology, communications and transport have apparently made human beings much more individualized and globalized (Bauman 2006; Beck 2006; 2002; 2000), it seems that the nation-state still remains the key organizing principle of our age. Rather than being a relic of past eras, nationalism has demonstrated a vibrancy and strength that very few, if any, contemporary ideologies could match. Although the waning, and even ultimate death, of nation-states and nationalisms has been proclaimed on numerous occasions over the past century or so, there are more nation-states in the world today than ever before and, as surveys show, more people identify in national terms at present than at any time in the past (Medrano 2009; Antonsich 2009; Smith and Kim 2006). As Antonsich’s (2009: 285) analysis of the Eurobarometer and other longitudinal surveys demonstrates, European citizens have become more not less nationalist; since the early 1980s a sense of national attachment and pride in one’s nation-state ‘has increased by ten percentage points’.

As our two cases show, the ascendency of nation-states and nationalisms does not stop on the surface of the globe, as the symbols of nationhood have now reached the extraterrestrial sphere and the deep interior of the Earth.

Why is nationalism such a potent and resilient ideology? How, why and when has the nation-state became the pre-eminent organizing mode of social and political life? Why do nationalist discourses still appeal to so many individuals all over the world? Why and how are nation-states often conceptualized in intimate, familial terms?

Once it becomes clear that the nation-state is, in many respects, an odd and unusual form of social organization that has been in existence for, historically speaking, a very short period of time, such questions gain in pertinence. Furthermore, once we realize that there is nothing natural and self-explanatory in feeling a strong sense of attachment to a specific nation-state, and that for 99.99 per cent of our history on this planet no individual was capable of developing such sentiments, then the present-day dominance of nationalism is even more puzzling. Where did nation-states and nationalism come from?

This book aims to provide answers to these questions. More specifically, the intention is to explore the sociological underpinnings of the historical processes involved in the formation and institutionalization of nation-states and nationalisms. To understand fully how and why the nation-state has emerged as the dominant model of polity, and nationalism as the principal source of political legitimacy in the modern era, it is necessary to take a longue durée view of these developments. To trace the origins of nation-states, one has to look at their organizational and ideological predecessors: hunting and gathering bands, chiefdoms, tribal confederacies, city-states and city-leagues, composite kingdoms, the early ‘capstone’ imperial orders and the latter-day modernizing empires. Similarly, to comprehend how nationalism came to be so ubiquitous in the modern age, it is crucial to engage with the pre-nationalist ideological doctrines and value systems that underlined the pre-modern social orders – from kinship-based descent, aristocratic myths of lineage, religious canons and the divine rights of monarchs to imperial creeds and civilizing mis-sions. Hence, although both nation-states and nationalisms are profoundly modern phenomena, they could not have emerged without the organizational and (proto-)ideological scaffolding created by their pre-modern precursors. The fact that modern-day nation-states are nothing like ‘capstone’ empires, city-states or composite kingdoms, and that contemporary nationalisms bear no resemblance to the imperial, mythological and religious doctrines of yesteryear, does not mean that there is no organizational or ideological continuity here. On the contrary, one of the key arguments of this book is that the appearance of the nation-state as a pre-eminent institutional form and of nationalism as a dominant (operative) ideology of the modern era owes much to the elements of continuity. However, this is not the supposed biological continuity so dear to most nationalists, socio-biologists, evolutionary psychologists and other primordialists. Moreover, as argued in chapter 3, the link between the pre-modern and modern world is not cultural either. The arguments of more sophisticated approaches such as those of ethno-symbolists (Smith 2009; 1986; Hutchinson 2005; 1994) or perennialists (Armstrong 1982; Hastings 1997) that insist on the deep cultural foundations of modern nationhood and on the ‘ethnic origins of nations’ are just as unconvincing. There is a substantial degree of continuity between the pre-modern and modern world but this is neither biological nor cultural continuity. Instead it is organizational and indirectly ideological continuity that is at the heart of this historical process. More specifically in this book, I focus on the three long-term historical processes which I consider decisive in shaping the character of nation-states and nationalisms as we know them today: (1) the cumulative bureaucratization of coercion, (2) centrifugal ideologization and (3) the way these two processes envelop the hubs of micro-solidarity. The book charts in detail how these three processes have helped create and maintain the world of nation-states and nationalisms.

Bureaucratization

There is no doubt that social organizations are the principal and most effective vehicles for social action.¹ Although human beings might be governed by strong and uncompromising beliefs, values and ideas, as Mann (2006a: 346–7) emphasizes, ‘ideas can’t do anything unless they are organized’. There is no social development, economic growth or political transformation without the existence of robust social organizations. It is organizational power that is at the heart of any significant social change. However, there are substantial differences between social organizations: they vary in size, organizational reach and capacity, in ability to control their members, territory, resources and ideology, and in many other ways. Since Weber (1968 [1921]) it has become apparent that, despite its popular association with inefficiency and heartlessness, bureaucracy has proved to be the most efficient mechanism for managing large numbers of individuals. In contrast to patrimonialism, gerontocracy, sultanism and other traditional forms of rule, the bureaucratic model of administration privileges knowledge, division of labour, merit, professionalism, consistency and transparency of rules, and the impersonality of hierarchical order. Once a version of this organizational model became a historical reality, it soon proved exceptionally potent in fulfilling specific organizational tasks. In terms of instrumental efficiency the traditional patrimonial or sultanic modes of rule could never match the capability of the bureaucratic administration. The direct consequence of this was an attempt to imitate and replicate this organizational model throughout the world. As Meyer and his collaborators (1997; 1992) have demonstrated, the isomorphic features of the bureaucratic form of organization can now be encountered all over the globe as the standardized models of governance are replicated at the level of polities, social movements and non-governmental organizations. More specifically, this includes such practices as rationalized demographic record keeping, uniformization of the constitutional forms that emphasize individual rights and state power, mass schooling developed around a standardized curriculum, development-oriented economic policies, standardized welfare provisions and population control policies, the formal equalization of the rights of citizens, and so on (Meyer et al. 1997: 152–3).

However, what is regularly overlooked by Meyer, and many others working in this research tradition, is that organizational power in general, and its bureaucratic form in particular, have a deep coercive underpinning (Maleševi

2010). Since their inception some 12,000 years ago, large-scale social organizations such as chiefdoms, city-states or pristine empires have emerged largely through coercive and violent means: wars, religious persecutions, massacres, slavery or corvée labour, to name a few. With the emergence of nation-states, able and willing to claim and establish legitimately a monopoly on the use of violence over their territories, this coercive organizational power has only increased. Modern nation-states have unprecedented organizational capacity to fight prolonged and devastating wars that no pre-modern polity could possibly match. This external capacity is firmly rooted in a state’s ability to pacify coercively the domestic realm, which remains heavily policed through a combination of direct surveillance, strict legislation and normative control. Since the bureaucratic mode of administration is popularly considered to be more legitimate and more efficient, it generally encounters little resistance. A particular political or economic system might be challenged or even successfully replaced by another, but there is no ambition to revert to the pre-organizational world of foragers. The political and economic colouring of a particular nation-state can change (e.g. liberal democracy, state socialism, military dictatorship etc.), but once established the nation-state acquires an organizational form that few would be willing to dismantle or change. The consequence of this is the continuous proliferation of complex social organizations in the modern era. These processes have particularly intensified since 1945 with the dramatic expansion in number of both governmental and non-governmental organizations (Boli and Thomas 1997; Feld 1972). This is especially visible on the global scale as there are more nation-states today than ever before in history.

Hence, as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• TitlePage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Salience of Nationalism
• 2 Group Solidarities before the Nation-State
• 3 The Birth and Expansion of Nationalisms
• 4 Nationalist Ideologies and Violence
• 5 The Omnipotence of Triviality
• 6 Beyond National Identity
• 7 The Future of Nationalisms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index