Politics & International Relations

Nationalism

Nationalism is a political ideology centered on the belief in the nation as a fundamental unit of human social organization. It emphasizes the interests, culture, and identity of a particular nation, often promoting the idea of national self-determination and sovereignty. Nationalism can manifest in various forms, from cultural pride to political movements seeking independence or autonomy.

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7 Key excerpts on "Nationalism"

Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
  • Political Ideology in Britain

    ...6 Nationalism Introduction Compared with most other ideologies Nationalism is theoretically thin. Indeed Freeden (1998) questions whether it is an ideology. The concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’ have not much exercised political theorists (but see Barker and Miller in Kelly, 2010). Yet if ideologies are ‘action-oriented’, Nationalism has demonstrably influenced political behaviour, over the last two centuries especially. Men and women have been prepared to die for their nation, and to kill for it. Although some argue that globalization renders the nation state obsolete, Nationalism continues to confound predictions of its imminent demise, retaining and even increasing its appeal in advanced industrial or post-industrial countries, in former communist states and in the developing world. Within the United Kingdom national identities are complex and shifting, with potentially profound implications for the very boundaries of the state. The devolution of powers to Scotland and Wales, and the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence reflect pressures from Scottish and Welsh nationalists. Some see a growth in English Nationalism, to some degree a response to political development elsewhere in Britain. Yet in all parts of the United Kingdom there are still many who maintain their British national identity and loyalty. Continuing concerns over perceived threats to the UK’s sovereign independence, from the European Union in particular, have strengthened Euroscepticism among Conservatives, and increased support for the UK Independence Party. What is Nationalism? According to Breuilly (1993, 2) Nationalism involves three basic assertions: (a) there exists a nation with an explicit and peculiar character; (b) the interests and values of this nation take priority over all other interests and values; (c) the nation must be as independent as possible...

  • Nationalisms
    eBook - ePub

    Nationalisms

    The Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century

    • Montserrat Guibernau(Author)
    • 2013(Publication Date)
    • Polity
      (Publisher)

    ...While the people who form a nation have a sense of fatherland and feel attached to a territory, the nation-state may be the result of a treaty, or the will of politicians who decide where to draw the line between states. One has only to look at the different maps of Europe that resulted from the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War, the modifications that followed the defeat of Hitler in 1945, and the present reshaping of Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 3 However, not all theoreticians place equal stress on the significance of the political aspect of Nationalism when formulating their definitions of it. Thus, while Gellner argues that ‘Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent’, 4 Giddens points to the psychological character of Nationalism, ‘the affiliation of individuals to a set of symbols and beliefs emphasising commonalty among the members of a political order’, 5 but undermines the political character of Nationalism by remaining silent about the specific claim of nationalists in creating their own state. Kohn also advances a psychological definition of Nationalism when he describes it as ‘a state of mind in which the supreme loyalty of the individual is felt to be due to the nation-state’. 6 This definition is the narrowest one in so far as it associates Nationalism only to the nation-state. In so doing, Kohn automatically excludes the Nationalism of people lacking a state, thus ignoring one of the strongest manifestations of Nationalism in our time. In my view, in understanding Nationalism it is crucial to consider the will to seek and exercise state power, referring both to the claim to create a state and to the process of building it. The origin of nations The origin of nations is one of the most controversial issues in discussing Nationalism and its political implications in particular...

  • Territories
    eBook - ePub

    Territories

    The Claiming of Space

    • David Storey(Author)
    • 2012(Publication Date)
    • Routledge
      (Publisher)

    ...4    Nations and Nationalism In the previous chapter, the nature and functions of the state, the primary building block in the political map of the world, were explored. This chapter examines the concepts of nation and Nationalism, key elements in the creating and sustaining of a world of states. We live in a world where the existence of nations, like states, is taken for granted. ‘Nation’, ‘nationality’ and ‘Nationalism’ are terms used regularly in the media and in everyday discourse. National identity is expressed through the singing of national anthems, support for national sports teams and in a variety of other, often mundane, ways. Nations and the associated political ideology of Nationalism underpin the configuration of the world political map. Many of the disputes between countries and, indeed, many of those occurring within the borders of certain countries centre on competing Nationalisms. In most instances, disputes between national groups are concerned with claims to territory. In many cases, these competing claims lead to extremely violent conflict, as in the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland and Kashmir. Such conflicts make us aware of the more overt ways in which Nationalism is asserted. However, as Michael Billig (1995) has argued, Nationalism is an ever-present phenomenon and the nation is re-produced in many less obvious everyday ways. Differences can be observed in such things as forms of dress, cuisine (Indian, Chinese, Thai, Mexican), language and a variety of other means. These serve to reinforce our sense of a world comprised of nations so that ‘the world of nations is the everyday world’ (Billig 1995: 6). The flying of flags on public buildings and many other everyday phenomena may well go unnoticed and unremarked. However, through their very ordinariness, they inculcate a sense of national identity. This is what Billig refers to as ‘banal Nationalism’...

  • Political Ideologies
    eBook - ePub

    Political Ideologies

    An Introduction

    • Robert Eccleshall, Vincent Geoghegan, Richard Jay, Michael Keeny, Ian MacKenzie, Richard Wilford, Vincent Geoghegan, Rick Wilford, Vincent Geoghegan, Rick Wilford(Authors)
    • 2014(Publication Date)
    • Routledge
      (Publisher)

    ...We could think of ourselves as connected by some kind of direct kinship (like a clan). We could think of ourselves as all part of one God-made family. But Nationalism proposes that we are parts of bounded communities and that these particular kinds of community are the source of political authority and legitimacy. At this level it is not a single coherent, doctrinal ideology (like socialism, liberalism or conservatism) but a kind of governing principle that gives order, meaning and significance to social relations and political structures. Scholar of Nationalism Walker Connor argues that the essence of a nation is ‘a psychological bond that joins a people and differentiates it, in the subconscious conviction of its members, from all other people in a most vital way’. What is significant, he argues, ‘is not what is but what people believe is … a nation is a matter of attitude and not of fact’ (1994: 93). What Connor means is that Nationalism is an attachment to a certain way of experiencing the world. In that respect it is a kind of social theory of how the world works – of what gives us a place in it, of how we should think of our relations with other people and of how we should be politically organized. But it is also a way of giving that theory emotional colour and depth. As Freeden points out: ‘All ideologies … carry emotional attachments to particular conceptual configurations, both because fundamental human values excite emotional as well as rational support, and because ideologies constitute mobilizing ideational systems to change or defend political practices’ (1996: 754). Nationalism, because it is rooted in everyday experiences, is able to do this in very powerful ways. The peculiarities of Nationalism perhaps teach us something about ideologies. They indicate the extent to which political ideologies are not merely abstract philosophies of the world but attempts to encourage us to act in particular ways within it...

  • Nationalism and Post-Colonial Identity
    eBook - ePub

    Nationalism 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’...

  • Nationalism
    eBook - ePub

    Nationalism

    A Religion

    • Frans A.M. Alting von Geusau, Frans A.M. Alting von Geusau(Authors)
    • 2017(Publication Date)
    • Routledge
      (Publisher)

    ...1 What Nationalism Is 1. Bases of Nationality: Language and Traditions Nationalism is an obvious and impelling movement in the modern and contemporary world. It is so obvious, indeed, and so frequently mentioned in the news, that it is apt to be taken for granted, like the rising and setting of the sun, and its importance overlooked. Nationalism, as we know it, is a modern development. It has had its origin and rise in Europe, and through European influence and example it has been implanted in America and all other areas of Western civilization. But it is now no longer peculiar to the Christian West. It has recently become an outstanding feature of states and peoples throughout the vast expanses of Asia and Africa, amid the traditional civilizations of Muslim, Hindu, Confucian, and Buddhist. It is especially evidenced across the whole breadth of the Muslim world: in the Turkey of Atatürk, in the Iran of Riza Pahlevi, in the Egypt of Nasser, in the separation of Pakistan from India, in the successful revolt of Indonesia against the Dutch, in the recently won independence of Libya, the Sudan, Somalia, Tunis, and Morocco, and in the Algerian rebellion. It is basic to the conflict between Arabs and Israelis. Moreover, to a fully developed Nationalism in Japan have now been added the nascent and militant Nationalisms of India, Burma, Ceylon, Malaya, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and, most recently, of colored peoples almost everywhere in Africa. In its latest stage, Nationalism is proving the dissolvent of oversea colonial empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and probably too, before long, that of Portugal. And we should not overlook the fact that Nationalism, as well as communism, is a mark of contemporary Russia and China. What actually is this Nationalism which is now so universal? It may best be understood, I think, by concentrating attention on Europe, and at first on western Europe...

  • Political Theory
    eBook - ePub
    • G. C. Field(Author)
    • 2021(Publication Date)
    • Routledge
      (Publisher)

    ...We may begin here with an obvious distinction. On the one hand, we have the established nations, which have been political units, under one government or ruler, for a long period, going back, in some cases, to a time before people had begun to think in terms of nationality. On the other, we have the ‘nationalities’, the people who aspire to become a single political unit but have not yet achieved their aim. The former case has already been discussed. It is the latter which provided the really explosive element in Europe from the time of Napoleon up to the First World War. It was hoped then that the problems it raised could be solved by the principle of self-determination, that is by inviting the people concerned to decide for themselves which nationality they felt themselves to belong to, and consequently which state they wished to join. The complications that arose in the practical application of this from the mixture of populations and from rival national claims can be studied in the histories of the Treaty of Versailles and the political developments that followed from it. But, in spite of all the difficulties, the principle itself was logical and reasonable. More recently similar problems have arisen from the nationalist movements in Asia and Africa. If we consider Nationalism or national feeling as a political and social phenomenon, there are two or three things that cannot fail to strike us. Nationalism is often put forward as a great moral principle, but it seems, on balance, to be unfavourable to the observance of other moral principles. The cause of nationality, like all causes, is a stimulus to courage and self-sacrifice, which we should normally regard as good things. But there are other things which are generally considered good, and whole-hearted devotion to a cause may often demand that these should be ignored, or regarded as evils to be combated, if they hinder the pursuit of the cause. Thus, truth and fairness are generally regarded as good...