This exciting new book is the first to offer a truly comprehensive account of the vibrant topic of nationalism. Packed with a series of rich, illustrative examples, the book examines this powerful and remarkable political force by exploring: - Definitions of nationalism - Language and nationalism - Religion and Nationalism - Nationalist history - The social roots of ideologies and the significance of race, gender and class - Nationalist movements, from dominant majorities to peripheral minorities socio-economic and sociological perspectives - State responses to nationalism Supported by a number of helpful illustrations, tables and diagrams, the text is both engaging and highly informative. Nationalism, Ethnicity and the State: Making and Breaking Nations will prove an insightful read for both undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in the area of Politics and International Relations.
A new perspective on how the nation-state emerged and proliferated across the globe, accompanied by a wave of wars. Andreas Wimmer explores these historical developments using social science techniques of analysis and datasets that cover the entire modern world.
Although nationalism and ethnicity have long been associated with minority populations, an emerging literature looks at how the state and/or a majority group interact with minorities, and how, behind the expression of the nation promoted by the state, there is often an ethnic core. This book contributes to this emerging literature on dominant nationalism and dominant ethnicity by presenting multidisciplinary contributions that center on how states deploy their own nationalism, and how the state's nation-building and nation-consolidating processes are very often spearheaded by a specific ethnocultural group. It focuses on the interrelated issues of identity, federalism and democracy. Dominant nationalism and ethnicity involve the projection, the promotion, and sometimes the imposition by the state and/or a dominant group of an identity, which can be challenged, negotiated and/or resisted by minority groups. This brings questions for democratic practices, since it raises the issue of self-rule. Since dominant nationalism and ethnicity are shaped by ideas and institutions relating to the territorial division of power, federalism is crucial for understanding these phenomena. The book is amongst the first to look at dominant nationalism and ethnicity from historical, theoretical, empirical and normative perspectives.
With its systematic coverage of different groups, this book demonstrates how similar trends of ethnic formation are affecting all parts of Nepal. Yet, within the boundaries of a single culturally diverse state, very different forms of ethnicity have emerged. " This is a truly thematic collection with a well-defined focus on the important contemporary topics of ethnic identity and nationalism. The importance of the theme is self-evident in a world attempting to come to grips with such problems in virtually all modern states. Anyone with an interest in contemporary Nepal should study this volume." Nepal is the only officially Hindu kingdom in the world and remains so in spite of a revolution, or people's movement, in 1990 which overthrew the partyless Panchayat regime and instituted a multiparty constitutional monarchy. Since November 1994, it has also had an elected Communist government, the first of its kind in South Asia. This volume takes a long-term view of the various processes of ethnic and national development that have been displayed, both before and after 1990. It brings together twelve carefully chosen ethnographic and historical chapters covering all of the major ethnic groups and regions of Nepal.
Ethnicity, Identity, and the Development of Nationalism in Iran investigates the ways in which Armenian minorities in Iran encountered Iranian nationalism and participated in its development over the course of the twentieth century. Based primarily on oral interviews, archival documents, memoirs, memorabilia, and photographs, the book examines the lives of a group of Armenian Iranians—a truck driver, an army officer, a parliamentary representative, a civil servant, and a scout leader—and explores the personal conflicts and paradoxes attendant upon their layered allegiances and compound identities. In documenting individual experiences in Iranian industry, military, government, education, and community organizations, the five social biographies detail the various roles of elites and nonelites in the development of Iranian nationalism and reveal the multiple forces that shape the processes of identity formation. Yaghoubian combines these portraits with a theoretical grounding to answer recurring pivotal questions about how nationalism evolves, why it is appealing, what broad forces and daily activities shape and sustain it, and the role of ethnicity in its development.
"[This book] It is provocative and bold. Brass bases his theories on his rather extensive study of the historical and political processes in multi-ethnic societies, especially India. There is much truth in his identification of the problem in the state of Punjab and elsewhere in India, in relentless centralization and, often, some questionable interventionist policies of the central government." --International Migration Review "Ethnicity and Nationalism is most timely and relevant. . . . This book offers many positives. It is provocative and bold. Paul Brass bases his theories on his rather extensive study of the historical and political processes in multiethnic societies, especially in India. There is much truth in his identification of the problem in the state of Punjab and elsewhere in India." --International Migration Review "The present volume is a very important contribution toward the study of ethnicity and nationalism. The book would be of interest to a wide range of scholars, particularly those with a South Asian focus." --Asian and Pacific Migration Journal "This volume is a very important contribution toward the study of ethnicity and nationalism. The book would be of interest to a wide range of scholars, particularly those with a South Asian focus." --Asia and Pacific Mirgration Journal Ethnicity and nationalism, interethnic conflicts, and secessionist movements have been major forces shaping the modern world and the structure and stability of contemporary states. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, such forces and movements have emerged with new intensity. Drawing his examples in this major study from a wide variety of multiethnic situations around the world, with special emphasis on South Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union, Paul Brass presents a distinctive theory concerning the origins of ethnic identity and modern nationalism. The author bases his theory on two focal arguments: one, that ethnicity and nationalism are not "givens," but are social and political constructions. The second is that ethnicity and nationalism are modern phenomena inseparably connected with the activities of the modern centralizing state. Examples and case studies from India comprise the heart of this volume. Three chapters focus specifically on two minority groups in India: north India Muslims and the Sikhs of Punjab. A second and substantial source of illustrations, which substantiate the theoretical arguments, is Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The author also presents a direct comparison of language-based ethnic problems in India and the Soviet Union. An original perspective on the major themes and arguments concerning ethnicity and nationalism, this book is essential reading for scholars and academics in the fields of ethnic studies, comparative politics, development studies, and anthropology. "Brass's work is a significant contribution to the study of ethnicity and nationalism. His work draws our attention to the complexity of the politics of identity. Students of Indian politics will find the book extremely useful and the people who in recent years are trying to invent a primordial basis for the Indian nation will find it disconcerting." --The Indian Economic and Social History Review "This timely volume....will be of considerable interest to students of South Asian politics for its clarity and commitment." --International Journal of Punjab Studies "When a major writer shifts the focus on his inquiry, it becomes the cause of a certain excitement within the discipline as a whole. Such is the case with Ethnicity and Nationalism where Paul Brass, long a familiar name for students of Indian politics, questions the applicability of the consociational model as an effective method of achieving democratic political order in multi-ethnic societies." --Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics "This is a useful book for it brings together Paul Brass' writings on the subject of ethnicity and politics between 1978 and 1990." --Contributions to Indian Sociology "By virtue of the theoretical and empirical assertions it makes and the political controversy it is bound to give rise to, Ethnicity and Nationalism is an important addition to Indian and comparative politics. The book can be read with profit." --Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics "This is a valuable addition to the literature on ethnicity and nationalism. But more than just an addition, it illumines the multi-layered social grid in multi-ethnic societies consisting of majorities and minorities, conflicts of interests, and the key role played by both the State and various elites in the formation of ethnicity and nationalism." --Media Development
Modern states have evolved as complex political structures in which unitary forms of government maintain an uncertain equilibrium with ethnically plural societies. Historically, ruling elites have tried with little success to eradicate ethnicity through genocide, bury it under accusations of tribalism, discredit it with the mind-frame of modernization, or confine it to local rather than national political arenas. This broad-ranging volume examines the dynamics of ethnic manipulation and accommodation by dominant and subordinate groups in the state-building process. Ethnicity and the State reflects the widely varying political contexts and cultures in which reasons of state contend with unyielding ethnic allegiances. European, South American, Asian, and Middle Eastern examples reveal a consistent set of themes and attitudes. The authors find that while the state must realize its authority and stability through a strictly defined charter of rights and values, ethnic identity exercises its power more freely and flexibly. The sense of peoplehood may be artificially constructed in response to immediate need, or it may be ancient and organic, growing over time. It has the potential to cut across race, class, and gender. Its central tenets and myths may be reinterpreted, recreated, enlarged upon, or modified as the political situation warrants. Flexibility of belief and the need to identify with a larger group account both for the durability of ethnic loyalty and its vulnerability to manipulation. This volume is particularly timely at a moment when national governments in many parts of the world must face the adoption of more equitable forms of rule to hold their ethnically diverse societies together. Taken together, the analyses presented here warn against institutionalizing ethnic strife and offer a vision of how the state may foster expectations and policies that serve the interests of all ethnic groups within their borders. Political scientists, historians, and anthropologists will find this book valuable for its interpretations of forces that continue to reshape the social and political fabric of the world.
