It is a curiosity of contemporary intellectual history that the global turn in the social sciences coincided with a sharp increase in theoretical and substantive work on nationalism. In 1983 Benedict Anderson could comment that plausible theory about nations, nationalism and nationality was conspicuously meagre. Yet only eight years later, in the preface to the second edition of Imagined Communities, he noted that the study of nationalism had been âstartlingly transformed â in method, scale, sophistication and share quantityâ (1991: xii). Contributions in the English language alone, including important works by Armstrong (1982), Breuilly (1982), Gellner (1983), Hroch (1985), Smith (1986), Chatterjee (1986), and Hobsbawm (1990), had rendered the traditional literature on nationalism largely obsolete. Since then, the quantity of work on nationalism and national identity has proliferated, with numerous contributions expanding the historical depth and theoretical sophistication of their study (Beiber 2020; Fox and Miller-Idriss 2008; Greenfeld 2019; Malesevic 2013, 2019; Skey and Antonsich 2017; Wimmer 2013, 2018).
All of this is hardly surprising. It reflects a reality in which nationalism and national identity have remained important bases of political solidarity, conflict and instability since the end of the Cold War, despite what some had supposed about the universalizing and homogenizing thrust of globalization (Malesevic 2019: 2â5; Ozkirimli 2017: 1). This is confirmed by even the most cursory glance of major political developments over the past three decades. In 1994, for instance, 18 of 23 wars being fought in the world had arisen out of conflicts based on nationalism and/or ethnicity. At the same time, three quarters of the worldâs refugees had been displaced by such conflicts, and eight out of thirteen United Nationsâ peace-keeping missions were for the purpose of keeping peace between ethno-nationalist adversaries (Gurr cited in Hechter 2000: 3). This was at a time of brutal nationalist conflict in the states of the fragmenting Yugoslav Federation, ethno-nationalist bloodletting in Rwanda, and continued nationalist contention in states as disparate as Indonesia, Russia, Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. By the end of the century, over three quarters of wars where there were more than 1000 deaths in battle were waged either by secessionists or ethno-nationalist groups struggling for power within existing states (Wimmer 2013: 2â3). Atavistic national identities, some with a genuinely venerable lineage and others of more recent provenance, defied the cosmopolitan promise of a more globally interconnected world.
The proximate source of much, but not all, of nationalismâs efflorescence in the 1990s is not difficult to identity. The collapse of âalready existing socialism,â and with it the break-up of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia along national lines, accounts for much of the increased nationalist contention and violence in that decade (Vujacic 2015; Beissinger 2009). Those conflicts continue to cast a long shadow over contemporary political space. But as the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the old Soviet Empire recede in the historical rear-view mirror, it is clear that this was not simply Hegelâs âowl of Minervaâ flying at dusk, as Eric Hobsbawm had optimistically predicted (1990: 183). Instead, the new century brought political developments that confirmed the political and cultural salience of nationalism in diverse parts of the planet.
The attenuation or even collapse of state power in parts of Africa and Asia, for example, opened up political conditions of possibility that were particularly fertile for ethno-nationalist mobilization and secessionist movements, as cases in tropical and subtropical Africa and the Horn of Africaâfrom Burundi and the Congo to Sudan and Eretriaâattest (See Part VI of Pavkovic and Radan 2011: 455â528). Something similar could be said of the Middle East in the wake of the political rebellions that convulsed the region from Yemen to Egypt to Syria in 2011, and the conservative backlash against them in the months and years that followed. While much of the western media coverage of these events focused on Islamist movements and pan-Arab transnationalism, the political demands of protestors were more often couched in the redemptive language of nationalism rather than religion (Hanieh 2013). As Marc Lynch astutely observes, âthe early Arab uprisings were both national and transnational, local and regional ⊠But even during such moments of pan-Arab sentiment, the potency of national identity could be seen in the ostentatious waving of national flags and chanting of national slogans by Egyptian and Jordanian protestersâ (Lynch 2015 no pagination). Similarly, the conservative reaction to the rebellions was framed as saving the nation.
Across the Atlantic, left-wing populists in much of Latin America in the 2000s and 2010s also found a renewed appreciation for the mobilizing power of nationalism, particularly when it was directed against the United States and its local supporters (De la Torre 2013; Madrid 2008; Eastwood 2006). Appeals to âthe Peopleâ were invariably made in the name of the nation, notwithstanding the socialist accent that leaders like Venezuelaâs Hugo Chavez and Boliviaâs Evo Morales gave those appeals. If populist rhetoric was transgressive in some respects, it was deeply conservative in its reverence for the nation. It could hardly be otherwise in circumstances where âthe massesâ are still in the thrall of nationalist ways of comprehending the world. The attraction of nationalism was not, however, limited to disadvantaged populations in less developed states. Its exacerbation was also felt in many advanced western states.
Nationalist movements in the Celtic fringe of the United Kingdom, for instance, became more politically active and electorally successful, culminating in a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, in which 45 percent of the population voted to secede from the Union. That would be followed two years later by the Brexit vote, where British nationalists, many of whom did not easily fit into customary Left/Right binaries, were able to persuade 52% of voters to leave the European Union. This was paralleled in Spain by demands for independence referenda and a growing militancy among Catalonian and Basque separatists, with the former being brutally supressed by Madrid in the period 2017â2019. Perhaps even more significant than these longstanding nationalist contentions has been the growth of far-right, anti-immigrant nationalist populism through much of Europe, Scandinavia, North America and Australasia (Kaufmann 2018; Eatwell and Goodwin 2018). The success of such movements and parties is not only measured electorally, as important as this is; their success is also reflected in the pressure that they have put on more traditional, centre right conservative parties to protect their right flank by adopting some of the nationalist...