ETHNICITY & NATIONALISM: CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

What is Ethno-nationalism?

Ideology and Politics that explicitly/implicitly define the nation in ethnic, racial or narrowly religious terms. Sometimes state-sanctioned but also popular movements.

Ethnicity’s three claims

1) common descent

2) shared history

3) certain symbols capture the core of the group’s identity

Kinship patterns, geographical concentration, religious affilcaiton, language and cultural attributes

Ethnic Groups vs Race

Race

• based on percieved physical differences

• consturcted by others

• based on differences in worth and reflects power relations

Ethnic Group

• based on common descent, claims of shared history, symbols of peoplehood

• usually constructed by both selves and others

• may or may not reflect people/material difference

Key Variables with Ethnicity: Assigned Asserted

Given by others or claimed as an identity.

Key Variables with Ethnicity: “Thick”

Very comprehensive: organizes a great deal of social life at the individual and collective level

Key Variables with Ethnicity: “Thin”

less comprehensive; does not organize much of social life

Modern State

• Contrasts with the traditional state in how quantity of interference in local life and culture (more)

• extension of formal education, scale of taxation, scale of taxation

• makes ethnicity into a problem of governance

Traditional States did not need to turn its people into a ——; it has no interest in this ideal

Modern States require that its people identify as members of a ——: with a shared ——,laws educational system, and patriotism commonly shared

nation

nation, history

What is a Nation?

A nation is a stable, historically developed community of people with a territory (sovereign, autonomous), economic life, distinctive culture, and common language and a single form of government.

What is Nationalism?

• “Horizontal” sense of membership—extends more to just common descent.

• An “Imagined community,” shaped perhaps by the territory, the language, or a religion

Nationalization is a process of ——- a ——- to make it more easily subject to bureaucratic administration: taxation, education, military

homogenizing, population

Parliamentary government= recognition that —- and —- would not function to support government —- and —— —- without assent

laws, taxes, power, national economy

Nationalism = readiness of people to identify themselves emotionally w/ “their” nation, and to be ——- mobilized as Americans, Germans etc. An ideology formulated following from the ——- ——-

politically, French Revolution

• Democratization of politics in 1800s provided ample opportunities for such mobilizations — mass elections

Nationalism: Asserts that a given population should be able to formulate —— and —- by which to determine their future

institutions, laws

Nationalism Maintains that such a population has a unique set of ——/—— characteristics

social, political

Nationalism claims that the world is divided into a number of such —— ——

distinct nations

“——” shifted from referecing a specific place & community to an imaginary bond w/tens or hundreds of million people

homeland

Nationalism in the 1800s

In the 1800s, industrialization and capitalism broke apart traditional communities—villages, kin networks, parishes, and neighborhoods—as people were uprooted and pushed into cities or forced to migrate. With their old sources of identity disrupted, many turned to the imagined community of the nation as a new sense of belonging and “home.”

Nationalism in the 1900s coined the metaphors…

Motherland and Fatherland

The State not only made the ——, but needed to make the —-

The nation provided a cement which bonded all citizens to their —-

Nation, State

As states create nations, it mobilized many homogenous peoples but —— others.

alienated

Nation-State: Challenges by a modern state to its constituent ethnicities can compel them to develop a ——— movement: ——-:

self-protective, nationalism

What is a nation-state?

A nation-state happens when one nation has its own state — meaning the cultural group (nation) matches the political borders (state).

When state-building is less intrusive, ethnic groups are less likely to develop ——. But when a group already has a strong sense of distinct identity, state intrusion is —— likely to trigger a nationalist response. Even if the state helps create a national identity, it becomes a true nation only when people see their collective identity as —— important than the state itself.

nationalism, more, more

• Nation= collective identity>state

Arab Nationalism: First promoted by the British & French then disparaged to serve the British & French region. Interests in pan-arabic unity was undermined by ——— in Syria, Iraq and Palestine. —→state-centered political identities

urban elites.