Civic Nationalism
Civic nationalism is a political ideology that emphasizes the importance of a shared civic identity and values, rather than a common ethnic or cultural heritage, as the basis for national unity. It promotes equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities for all citizens, regardless of their background, and often advocates for inclusive and participatory democratic processes.
7 Key excerpts on "Civic Nationalism"
eBook - ePub- Jasper Trautsch, Jasper Trautsch(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Put differently, a Civic Nationalism cannot only be based on certain abstract principles and state institutions, but also has to be built on a historically grown political culture, which provides these principles and institutions with deeper meaning and significance and which makes the nation unique and, as a result, demarcates it. 81 After all, as pointed out above, a particularistic community that is defined by nothing else but universal principles is logically impossible. Therefore, all nationalisms, by necessity, are, to varying degrees, cultural nationalisms. 82 Admittedly, in practice, this national political culture will in most cases have emanated from the overall culture of the historically dominant ethnicity (the political culture of the U.S., for example, having been mainly shaped by British settlers and their descendants). However, this historical rootedness of a civic nation’s political culture in the traditions of a particular ethnic group is not necessarily a contradictio in terminis, 83 as long as its defining principles are universalist in nature (such as universal suffrage, equal rights, social justice for all citizens) and their application is non-discriminatory (i.e., the enjoyment of the political privileges the membership in a civic nation confers in theory is not compromised in practice) and as long as the members of ethnic minorities and naturalized immigrants have an equal chance to contribute to and influence the further development of that political culture. 84 Undeniably, this definition of Civic Nationalism leaves many relevant and hotly debated questions open such as how to distinguish a political culture from an overall culture and how far it is legitimate to force minorities to accept the political values stemming from the dominant culture. However, only such a broad definition allows for the inclusion of a large variety of multiethnic nations from around the globe in this study...
eBook - ePub- Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff, Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff, Karl Cordell, Stefan Wolff(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In this chapter we will examine this apparent divide and offer some thoughts, analysis and examples to illustrate that the ethnic–civic distinction is indeed less stable and more fragile than appears from a brief examination of the literature within nationalism studies, as well as looking at different views from civil society and other agencies. To begin with we need to set out the parameters of the debate and look closely at what the civic and ethnic dimensions to the nation-state are. Ethnic and Civic Nationalisms Civic Nationalism maintains that the nation should be composed of all those – regardless of race, colour, creed, gender, language or ethnicity – who subscribe to the nation’s political creed. This nationalism is called civic because it envisages the nation as a community of equal, rights bearing citizens, united in patriotic attachment to a shared set of political practices and values. (Ignatieff 1994 : 3–4) There is considerable evidence that modern nations are connected with earlier ethnic categories and communities and are created out of pre-existing origin myths, ethnic cultures and shared memories; and that those nations with a vivid, widespread sense of an ethnic past, are likely to be more unified and distinctive than those which lack that sense. (Smith 1996 : 385) Debates rage on the topic of the ‘ethnic’ and the ‘civic’ in nationalist discourses. For Ignatieff (1994) the appeal of Civic Nationalism is obvious, rejecting as it does any appeal to the ‘who and what’ of the citizens found within its territory – more important is a common belief in agreed political practices and values. For Smith (1996) this is somewhat illusionary because you cannot escape the fact that the ‘ethnic past’ is a vital element for even the most ‘modern’ of nations and indeed those without, or denying, this past will ultimately become undone in denial...
eBook - ePubCivil Society
Theory, History, Comparison
- John A. Hall, John R. Hall(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...6 Civic Nation, Civil Society, Civil Religion Christopher G. A. Bryant Given their salience in nineteenth- and twentieth-century history and popular consciousness, nations, as distinct from nationalisms, have been surprisingly undertheorized. In terms of both individual identity and collective action, nations have figured at least as prominently as class – even if the much more voluminous social science literature on class would lead one to suppose otherwise. No doubt one reason for this is that the intellectual content of nationalist writings has seldom impressed social scientists of any political allegiance. Romantics, in particular, tend to leave rationalists cold; nationalisms are real enough but nations themselves often seem dubious entities. Gellner, for example, has written an erudite and judicious book on Nations and Nationalism which offers a typology of nationalisms but no clear conception of nation. 1 He skirts the issue entertainingly without ever quite deciding how to address it. Such diffidence is no longer tolerable. If men and women believe entities to be real, they have real consequences. Relative inattention to nation continues to cost us dear as we struggle to come to terms with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia and the horrors of ethnic cleansing in the Caucasus and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Is any conception of nation at the heart of any claim for nationhood made by any political activist, intellectual or social scientist as defensible as any other? In this essay I want to review and develop further some of the theorizing of nation that does exist. In particular, I want both to sharpen the analytical distinction between civic and ethnic nations and to commend the virtues of civility and an inclusive civil society which are features of a civic nation...
eBook - ePub- Charles Jones, Richard Vernon(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...The idea originated in post-war West Germany and, as developed by Jürgen Habermas (1994), came to be understood as attaching loyalty to constitutional principles rather than shared nationality. For Habermas, citizenship means not only political membership but equal status defined by civil rights. For co-citizens, shared national culture is neither necessary nor appropriate as a focus of collective allegiance; rather, what is needed is shared ‘political culture’ that serves as ‘the common denominator for a constitutional patriotism’ that at the same time enables the persistence of a stable, liberal-democratic, modern, multicultural society. Habermas wants to ensure that attachments to our fellow citizens can provide ‘particularist anchoring’ while preserving ‘the universalist meaning of popular sovereignty and human rights’ (Habermas 1994: 25, 27–8). One hope for constitutional patriotism is that it could enable fellow citizens to share a commitment to liberal-democratic constitutional values as a way of identifying with their country. But it has been argued that this has not been the case (Kymlicka 2003: 378–80). Consider attempts to foster a pan-Canadian identity that would be shared by Canada's constituent English, French and Indigenous nations. In recent decades, political values amongst these communities converged on a set of civil, political and social rights, but at the same time more Quebeckers identified as ‘Québécois’ than ‘Canadian’. It seems that shared values cannot substitute for shared identity. Habermas's constitutional patriotism has been accused of being bloodless as well as too abstract and formalistic to be able to provide the energy to bind a people culturally to each other (Canovan 1996: 87–97; Kleinig et al. 2015: 42)...
eBook - ePubNationalisms
The Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century
- Montserrat Guibernau(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...2 The Political Character of Nationalism Nationalism and the nation-state Two major dimensions need to be considered when analysing nationalism. We must look at the ways in which nationalism both shapes and attempts to cope with the rise of the modern state; and, because the study of nationalism cannot be limited to its political character, we have to acknowledge fully the role nationalism plays as one of the major sources of identity for contemporary individuals. The idea of the nation is the most significant of several categorical identities that mediate between the autonomous but relatively weak individual and complex and powerful global forces. In a world system in which nation-states are the prime political actors, individuals are often able to transcend their finite nature through identification with the nations to which they belong. As Giner argues, the relative decline of ‘supernatural’ religions has contributed to the emergence of ‘civil religion’. By this he means a sacralization of certain aspects of community life through public rituals, political or civil liturgies and popular devotions, designed to confer power and strengthen identity and order within heterogeneous societies. In this context, the community achieves transcendence through its symbols and epic history. 1 This chapter develops an account of the rise of the nation-state and the ideas which led to the emergence of nationalism in Western Europe. In focusing upon the political character of nationalism, I look at the relation between nationalism and the nation-state, and emphasize the crucial role of nationalism in the modern discourse of political legitimacy. In so doing, I argue that two main types of nationalism can be distinguished: that instilled by the rulers of the nation-state as a means to homogenize its population; and that of nations without a state incorporated into larger nation-states...
eBook - ePubNationalism and Post-Colonial Identity
Culture and Ideology in India and Egypt
- Anshuman A Mondal(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...National sentiment, or identity, is yet another way in which nationalism can be and has been defined. In this sense it signifies the sense of belonging to a cultural community called ‘the nation’, and as such it is probably the only definition of nationalism that can be accommodated by both statists and culturalists since it does not depend upon a prior definition of the term ‘nation’. For Benedict Anderson, ‘nation-ness, as well as nationalism are cultural artefacts of a particular kind’. 22 Gellner concurs in that this sense of belonging to a nation is, necessarily, a sense of belonging to a culture, ‘Modern man is not loyal to a monarch or a land or a faith, whatever he may say, but to a culture.’ 23 And yet politics cannot be entirely overlooked, even here. Earlier, it had been stated that if, as the culturalists concede, modern nations are the consequence of political transformations of an ethnie then the sense of belonging to a nation is not the sense of belonging to a culture per se (all previous societies have had this sense of belonging) but rather to the particularly politicized culture that is the nation. As Anderson notes, the nation is not just an imagined community but an ‘imagined political community’. 24 Ultimately, what we have witnessed is not merely the confusing number of definitions constituting the central terms of debate but also the systematic separation of culture and politics at some fundamental level in each of the theoretical positions. Indeed, such a separation seems endemic to the study of nationalism, and this has resulted in the great morass of confusion over what the terms signify since its effect is to multiply twice over the discursive significations of ‘nation’, ‘nationalism’, ‘nation-state’ and ‘national identity’...
eBook - ePubCommunity of Citizens
On the Modern Idea of Nationality
- Dominique Schnapper(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In a different way, their professed ambition was in conformity with the Habermasian concept: they wished for a political agreement to be concluded among culturally different groups, according to which each would maintain its identity. But rapidly, they joined those who favored a communal type of nation in order to mobilize energies around their political project, then to defend the “homeland in danger.” Confronted by external danger, they participated in the organization of passions in favor of the Revolution and the nation in order to lead a national war. They thereby demonstrated that a citizenship which was neither embedded in history nor the subject of its own destiny, and which did not possess concrete instruments for the integration of populations and for intervention on the international stage, remains an abstract idea. The nation is a concrete social and political form. This is also the reason why “postnational” projects—defined as perfect incarnations of the democratic nation—even if they were attainable, might not be politically desirable. On the one hand, the “disunity of political reference and of cultural belonging,” to adopt Jean-Marc Ferry’s formula, risks leaving essentialist nationalisms without any political control and arousing fragmenting markers of identity and violent conflicts. By losing any political dimension and any political authority, nations would no longer control ethnic passions. On the other hand, the total rationality and abstraction of the political project would render that “pure” nation excessively fragile. In a world marked by the fervor and sometimes even the ferocity of ethnic nations, could nations founded only on “constitutional patriotism” survive? It seems inevitable that, to ensure its existence and its vitality, the nation must build and maintain elements of ethnic order...
