Ethnic Nationalist Movement

12 Key excerpts on "Ethnic Nationalist Movement"

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  Constructing Ethnopolitics in the Soviet Union

  Samizdat, Deprivation and the Rise of Ethnic Nationalism

  • D. Zisserman-Brodsky(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Today, nationalist movements are primarily ethnic movements, which tend to be defined “as referring to the efforts of ethnic groups, which are not identified with the state to reshape state structures . . . . The first core concept in this definition is ethnicity.” 54 According to the authors of The Social Origins of Nationalist Movements, “Nationalist movements find political expression in demands ranging from recognition of regional cultural distinc- tiveness, in forms varying from weakly supported pleas for autonomy or merely for basic rights to strongly or even violently expressed and generally supported demands for independence.” 55 Analyzing the political demands of ethnic minority groups, Smith indi- cated six types of ethnic strategies: isolation, accommodation, communalism, autonomism, separatism, and irredentism. 56 J. Elklit and O. Tonsgaard 57 similarly distinguished between the following models of political demands: (1) the secessionist model; (2) the frontier adjustment model; (3) the auton- omy model; (4) the group rights model; and (5) the individual rights model. “These five models articulate a minority group perspective. From a majority point of view, a sixth model, a discrimination model, could be added.” 58 8 ● Constructing Ethnopolitics in the Soviet Union Some scholars pointed to another expression of ethnic nationalism: racial- ist terms and the pursuit of “conservative, anti-democratic, and often anti- socialist purposes.” 59 But the ethnonationalist principle can also be “asserted in ethical, universalistic spirit,” 60 and ethnonationalist movements can pro- claim their commitment to the principles of liberal democracy.

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  A Companion to Political Geography

  • John A. Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell, Gerard Toal, John A. Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell, Gerard Toal(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  For some, this is a matter of the underlying meaning rather than the specific language which is used in reproducing nationalist ideology. For others it goes even deeper, for it problematizes the very legitimacy of nationalist mobilization in what are increasingly multicultural democracies. Elements of the tension between individ-ual and group consciousness are also at the heart of the current epistemological and methodological debates within the social sciences (McIntyre, 1984), and underlie the difficulties of finding the appropriate institutional expression of nationalism in practice. 2 The literature on nationalism is voluminous. 3 Although geographers have made significant contributions, few have analysed the democratic context of nationalism, or the internal dynamics of nationalist movements, whether in terms of conflicting aims, ideological disputes or support base. Most geographical analysis has focused on comparing the electoral fortunes of nationalist movements within various voting systems (Johnston and Taylor, 1989). 4 A second emphasis has been on nationalism and uneven development. Other work has explored the notion of imagined commu-nities, the iconographic representation of nationalist symbols in the landscape, conflict analysis, and the use of violence by minority nationalist movements (see, e.g., Blaut, 1987; Johnson, 1995). 5 Some of the outstanding examples of geograph-ical analyses of majoritarian nationalisms include Zelinsky (1988), who offers a penetrating account of the American experience. Additionally, Kaiser (1994) and Smith (1996a, b; Smith et al., 1998) disentangle the Russian and Soviet experience, and Jisi (1997) and Zhao (1997, 2000) offer cogent perspectives on nationalism in China, focusing on nativism, anti-traditionalism, and pragmatism. In this chapter, my focus will be an analysis of the scope for nationalist movements within the context of the contemporary European political system.

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  Nationalism, Self-Determination and Political Geography (Routledge Library Editions: Political Geography)

  • R. J. Johnston, David Knight, Eleonore Kofman, Ron Johnston(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  In many autonomist and separatist nationalisms (post-colonial and old-state), much effort is devoted to constructing a nation out of what are in reality disparate communities and classes. Nationalism offers an ideological focus for territorial, social and political unity, where previously none existed, or had ceased to exist. Interpretations in terms of internal colonialism and national liberation have been shared by movements in different parts of the world, with European movements comparing their relationship to the centre, and even strategies for liberation, with Third World liberation struggles. Of course, the fundamental question to be asked is why different types of nationalist (sub-state) movements should be seeking to mobilise a population within a given territory, whose boundaries are not necessarily fixed.

  In Summary

  The essays in this book have been assembled to help us advance the understanding of a major issue in the contemporary map of the world. That understanding requires two linked spheres of activity. The first is the development of a coherent overarching framework, or mode of analysis, that allows us to appreciate the general nature of nationalism and its associated concept of self-determination. The other is the elucidation of particular nationalisms, thereby to increase our awareness of the detailed nature of such social and political movements and their geographical and historical contexts. The two types of work feed off each other; the overall framework enhances the understanding of particulars, whereas the latter enables the framework to be more substantially constructed.

  All of the essays in this book have been written by geographers. Their discipline has no exclusive claim to the study of nationalism. What the essays demonstrate very clearly, however, is that nationalism is a form of social and political movement firmly rooted in territory, in place and space. Nationalist movements do not just operate territorially, they interpret and appropriate space, place and time, upon which they construct alternative geographies and histories. All too often, writing on nationalism has passed over the significance of territory in nationalist ideologies, politics and strategies.

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  Democracy and Nationalism in Southeast Asia

  From Secessionist Mobilization to Conflict Resolution

  • Jacques Bertrand(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  “Nationalist” Mobilization and the Parameters of Conflict Nationalist groups 4 have distinct characteristics that differentiate them from other types of ethnic groups and that shape the parameters of conflict. First, they identify as “nations,” with political objectives ranging from some form of shared power to autonomy or secession. 5 Second, they are territorially concentrated, which intensifies claims to a homeland and supports their discourse of “nationhood.” Third, their conflict is always a struggle against the state. Furthermore, their grievances, while potentially similar to other ethnic groups, usually contain some claim to power over territory and 4 The nomenclature to identify these groups is vague and oftentimes contentious. I explain why there is a distinct political project involved in seeking self-determination over a particular territory, which distinguishes claims of such groups from those of other ethnic groups, or minorities, that might be seeking protection of their rights without contesting either the bound- aries of the state or the legitimacy of its rule. The term “national minorities” has been used mostly in the context of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by recovering the categories that were themselves institutionalized by the Soviet Union and other communist countries, and that have generated many studies on the repercussions of crafting such institutional categories. See Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Mark R. Beissinger, “A New Look at Ethnicity and Democratization,” Journal of Democracy 19, no. 3 (2008): 93–96. Connor used “ethnonationalist,” which has been sometimes used to characterize such groups, but the nature of ethnic boundaries often shifts as the emphasis becomes the recovery of their “homelands” and territories that usually are far from being ethnically homogenous.

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  The Study of Ethnicity and Politics

  Recent Analytical Developments

  • Adrian Guelke, Jean Tournon, Adrian Guelke, Jean Tournon(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Verlag Barbara Budrich

    (Publisher)

  Thus, we begin with an examination of indigenous, territorialized ‘primary’ ethnicity, and proceed to watch the ethnic phenome-non become transformed into political reality. Each stage of this process is analytically discrete and home to a distinct literature. We shall review each in turn. Eric Kaufmann and Daniele Conversi 50 Figure 1. The Separatist Route to Nation-State-Formation Primary Ethnicity Ethnic Cultural Nationalism Ethnic Political Nationalism ( i.e. Separatism) Successful National Secession New Nation-State Ethno-Cultural Reviva l & Association Political Mobilisation, Agitation & Conflict Military, Diplomatic, or Democratic Success Internationa l Recognition Source: Kaufmann, Eric and Daniele Conversi. Ethnicity Ethnicity may be defined as thought and action stemming from identification with a community of putatively shared ancestry that exceeds the scale of face-to-face gemeinschaft . Cultural markers like language, religion, customs and phenotype (or ‘race’) are used by ethnies to demarcate their boundaries, thus ethnic groups need to possess at least one (but no more than one) differ- Ethnic and Nationalist Mobilization 51 entiating marker. Meanwhile, nations are integrated communities of compact territory and history which have political aspirations. Modern s tates , by con-trast, are political units which have a monopoly on the use of force within a well-demarcated territory (Francis 1976; Weber 1978; Smith 1991). Here we begin with primary-group ethnogenesis – which is treated in the classic his-torical-sociological treatises by Armstrong (1982), Smith (1986) and Hobs-bawm and Ranger (1983). More recently, instrumentalist writers – who emphasize the role of elite self-interest in constructing identities – have emphasized the shifting and po-litically contingent nature of ethnic identity formation (Laitin and Fearon 1996; Laitin 1998; Brass 1996; Brubaker 2004).

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  Understanding Third World Politics

  Theories of Political Change and Development

  • Brian Smith(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  In contrast, the situationalist theory of nationalism sees claims to nationhood as based on a sense of common interest and self-preservation among people confronted by a threat to their well-being from uneven economic development, ‘internal colonialism’, and other forms of discrimination. Ethnic characteristics become important in defining group identity when the circumstances (or situation) make it rational to act defensively. Activists are then needed to mobilize ethnic consciousness as a basis for interest articulation. Constructivist theory sees nationalism as an ideology wielded by politi-cal elites to legitimize their demands for power. Nationalist ideology consists of myths about community ancestry, history, culture, and home-land to provide people with a sense of identity, an understanding of contemporary problems, and prescriptions for their solution (Brown, 2000). These interpretations underpin some of the explanations that have been offered for political secession as a destabilizing force in Third World states. Unfortunately, any attempt to find a simple causal explanation of nationalism and separatism is probably doomed to failure by the sheer diversity of the phenomenon. The history of nationalism reveals wide differences in the size, cohesiveness, and mobilization of ethnic commu-nities; in the goals of nationalist movements; in the threats that they pose to existing states; in the economic contexts in which ethno-nationalism is found; and in the political methods chosen by nationalist movements (Kellas, 1991). An exhaustive review of the literature on nationalism in the Third World is well beyond the scope of this chapter. All that can be attempted is a critical look at the theoretical perspectives which seem to be of greatest value for understanding why part of a country might seek to break away. 176 Understanding Third World Politics

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  Visions of Sovereignty

  Nationalism and Accommodation in Multinational Democracies

  • Jaime Lluch(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • University of Pennsylvania Press

    (Publisher)

  Introduction 9 Estonia, Belgium, and France, are about identities and conflicting interest structures, ‘‘yet their manifestations are less violent and are better described in terms of tensions than conflict’’ (3). Much more common as a political problem, and nearly universal for stateless nations’ national movements, is the question focused on here: In democratic states, stateless nations’ na-tionalists have various political strategies available to them to achieve their nation-affirming and nation-building objectives; therefore, we need to investigate why some nationalists opt for a secessionist orientation while other nationalists within the same national movement opt for pro-autonomism or pro-federation orientations. Several scholars engaged in the study of nations and nationalism have failed to recognize the internal variance in the nationalist camp and the rich diversity of heterogenous political orientations within substate national movements. John Breuilly (1993: 2), for example, argues that nationalism is a term used to refer to political movements seeking or exercising state power and justifying such action with nationalist arguments. The latter is a political doctrine built upon three basic assertions, including the idea that ‘‘the nation must be as independent as possible. This usually requires at least the attainment of political sovereignty.’’ Ernest Gellner (1983) famously wrote that ‘‘Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’’ (see also Hobsbawm 1990: 9). Michael Hechter (2000: 7) argues that nationalism is defined as ‘‘collective action designed to render the boundaries of the nation congruent with those of its governance unit.’’ He argues, however, that ‘‘groups seeking to advance the congruence of nation and governance unit (say, by promoting national sovereignty) are unambiguously national-ist.

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  An Introduction to Political Geography

  Space, Place and Politics

  • Martin Jones, Rhys Jones, Michael Woods, Mark Whitehead, Deborah Dixon, Matthew Hannah(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Furthermore, an important element within nationalism is the belief that every nation should possess its own sovereign territory or state. The ideology and political practice of nationalism therefore seeks the ideal political and territorial scenario of the nation-state, in which every citizen of the state is a member of the same nation. Thinking of this in geographical terms, nation-states represent political geographies in which the boundary of the nation coincides with the boundary of the state (Gellner 1983: 1). Obviously, in a world characterised by continuous flows of people, the ideal of the nation-state is precisely that – an ideal that can never be achieved. Indeed, it has been famously argued by Mikesell (1983) that the only example of a nation-state in the contemporary world is Iceland. Unfortunately, the difficulties in achieving the goal of the nation-state do not stop states, nations and minority groups from trying – sometimes peaceably and sometimes violently – to reach the ideal. Examples such as the attempts to create an independent Quebec through referenda and the terrorism of ETA, the Basque separatist movement in Spain, demonstrate the salience of such processes within contemporary political geography. We now possess an understanding of what nations are, along with some of the ideologies that are linked to them. The key question that has exercised the minds of social scientists and historians in the field of nationalism is ‘How are nations formed and continue to exist?’ To put it another way, ‘How are nations reproduced?’ We want to distinguish here between two major categories of theories of nationalism. A set of classical theories of nationalism has sought to examine the longer-term processes, which have contributed to the emergence both of nationalism as an ideology and of specific nations

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  Nationalism

  Theories and Cases

  • Erika Harris(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • EUP

    (Publisher)

  The individual, the state, the legitimacy of the state and the identity of the political community, and thus the ability to pursue the interests of the people and legitimise the actions on their behalf all merge into the politics of the nation state. This political approach can also explain better the success or failure of nationalist movements seeking greater autonomy within Theories of Nations and Nationalism 59 the state or even the separation from the state and the unification with the neighbouring kin state – once the sentiment is translated into political action, nationalism makes more sense in terms of its aspirations. 31 So, whether we are observing separation-seeking nationalisms of the former Yugoslav republics, or an autonomy-seeking Hungarian minority in post-communist Europe, or the Palestinian struggle for the extrication from Israeli occupation, nationalism is an action-orientated political movement seeking control of a territory. All of those movements will be discussed at greater length in the following chapters. The tools of the nationalist trade, however, are not always forward looking. Nairn spoke of nationalism as being a ‘modern Janus’ – Janus was the Roman god with two faces, one looking forward and one back. The backward glances are looking into the past of the nation to seek joys of victories, recall pains of defeats and appeal to the wisdom of the people who have survived the past and must ‘gather strength’ for the struggle ahead. 32 This, of course, assumes that the story of the nation is a real one and that there is a past that can be tapped into in a constructive way for the task in hand. I don’t want to spend much time reminding the reader that the power of nationalist elites to spin a story is not limitless – it needs the audience to respond and to respond with a sense of recogni-tion and emotiveness which reinforces a sense of common destiny, and therefore a common future.

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  Introduction to Comparative Politics

  The State and its Challenges

  • Robert Hislope, Anthony Mughan(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  This is especially the case when political parties organize around ethnic cleavages. Ethnic parties often gain electoral advantage by raising the temperature of ethnic relations and saturating the national discourse with a rhetoric based on interethnic 205 206 INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE POLITICS suspicion, stereotype, and chauvinism. Under these circumstances, a polity can expect little relief from ethnic tensions. At its most extreme, ethnic nationalism promotes secession, which is a political act designed to divide the territory of the state so as to allow the aggrieved group to acquire its own independent state. The desire of ethnic groups to signal their political independence by possessing their own state is a powerful political goal encapsulated neatly in the slogan of the nineteenth-century Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini, “for every nation a state.” This goal still resonates around the globe today. It is also true that states challenge ethnic groups just as much as the other way around. Dominant groups who rule the state are frequently loath to concede equal recognition to minorities for fear that it will jeopar-dize their constitutional monopoly of sovereignty and undermine their sta-tus as the preeminent national grouping within the state. Consequently, such groups are commonly the main promoters of ethnic tension and per-petrators of violence. Programs of genocide and expulsion are typically the work of states, or of actors and groups who enjoy state support. States can also act as third-party instigators and interveners who stir the ethnic cauldron of neighboring states in the hope of benefiting coethnics who reside in them. In sum, the state is a both a prized object and repressive agent over and against which ethnic groups struggle in their demand for rights, recognition, and self-rule. This chapter explores the multiple and complex frictions between ethnic nationalism and states in the modern world.

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  Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nepal

  Identities and Mobilization after 1990

  • Mahendra Lawoti, Susan Hangen(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Contextualizing nationalism and ethnic conflict

  Figure 0.1 Topographic map of Nepal. Prepared by Milan Shrestha

  Figure 0.2 Caste/Ethnographic map of Nepal: Prepared by Bal Krishna Mabuhang

  Passage contains an image

  1Introduction

  Nationalism and ethnic conflict in Nepal

  Susan Hangen and Mahendra Lawoti

  The decade long Maoist armed conflict formally came to an end in 2006 with the peace settlement between the government of Nepal and the rebels, but ethnic mobilization and conflicts, which surged forward in Nepal after the restoration of democracy in 1990, have further increased since 2006. The largely peaceful identity movements of the 1990s became more violent after the turn of the century: an organization of indigenous nationalities launched an armed insurgency in the late 1990s in the eastern hills, and dozens of armed groups have arisen in the hills and Tarai after the turn of the century.

  These movements, based on ethnicity, language, caste, religion, and regional identity, have become increasingly central players on the contemporary political stage, reshaping debates on the definition of the Nepali nation, nationalism and the structure of the Nepali state. Members of the traditional dominant group still lead the polity but they can no longer ignore marginalized identity groups. In fact, groups like the Madhesis have begun to wield disproportionate power in the making and unmaking of the governments and in coalitional politics after the 2008 election. This volume describes these identity movements and their evolution in the two decades following the 1990 People’s Movement.

  This book represents the first comparative analysis of identity-based movements in Nepal. It contains chapters on the Madhesi (regional, linguistic), Muslim (religious), Dalit (caste) and indigenous nationalities (linguistic, ethnic, religious) movements as well chapters that compare the movements. By analyzing these diverse movements within a single volume, and within some chapters in the volume, we aim to provide data to allow for the methodologically rigorous production of generalizations about the formation of movements and the differences between movements.

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  Ukraine: Perestroika to Independence

  • T. Kuzio(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  3 This chapter will, however, consider the work of those authors who have looked at the recent development of nationalism in the Soviet Union and Ukraine in a theoretical context. Their approaches reflect changes in the theoretical approach to nationalism over the past three 1 decades. Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone and Bohdan Krawchenko’s work is based on the traditions of the 1960s and 1970s, which stressed the primacy of socio-economic factors in political science analysis. Hence they draw heavily on Karl Deutsch and Michael Hechter. In contrast, Alexander Motyl’s work reflects the increasing emphasis on the role of the state that became popular from the mid-1970s onwards, and Kenneth Farmer’s emphasis on nationalism as a cultural phenom- enon has much in common with the work of Anthony Smith. 4 DEFINITIONS Anthony Smith has defined nationalism as ‘an ideological movement for the attainment and maintenance of autonomy, cohesion and indi- viduality for a social group deemed by some of its members to consti- tute an actual or potential nation’. 5 This definition will be followed throughout this book. ‘Autonomy’ in the Soviet context could, however, have a variety of meanings, ranging from seeking to defend and maximise Ukrainian interests within an all-Union context to outright separatism; hence the term ‘nationalism’ is reserved here for the latter phenomenon; namely, the pursuit of an independent nation-state. The ‘social group’ deemed to be a ‘nation’ is defined by Smith as: ‘a named human population sharing a myth of common descent, historical memories and a mass culture, and possessing a demarcated territory, common economy and common legal rights and duties.’ 6 The first half of this definition identifies the primarily cultural markers of ethnicity, which can be transformed into nationhood by the addition of the civic attributes mentioned in the second half of the extract.

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