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Summary complete lectures national thought 2022/2023
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complete lectures of national thought in Europe + little notes from the book + podcast notes (just for the first two lectures)
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NATIONAL THOUGHTIntroduction podcast
- National borders are unstable
- Not all nations have their own state
- States with many ethnic groups are called multiethnic states
- Ethnic nationalism has often been instrumentalised throughout the 19th century
- Civic nationalism: unlike ethnic nationalism, does not proclaim the primacy of one ethnic group
over the other, but emphasises the rights and responsibilities of the citizens
- Sometime both overlap
- National homogeneity: important political trend in 19th
- Sharing the same culture has meant that people belonged to the same ethnical group
- Culture has been used to in-steel a sense of national identity and transform cultural and
linguistic diversity into a homogeneous..?
- The nation is one and homogeneous in a cultural sense
- France (multicultural nation before French Revolution, after it became a cultural homogeneous
nation)
- Geography alone doesn’t explain the sentiments and the political positions of the states
Ethnic groups/ethnies have:
- a common proper name to identify the group
- A myth of common ancestry (ascendenza) and kinship (parentela)
- Shared historical memories and memories of a common past including heroes, important
events etc
- A link with a real or mythical land, a symbolic attachment to a homeland or ancestral land
- A sense of belonging to the same community and solidarity towards the other members of the
group
- Ethnic groups share many characteristics with nations, not all ethnic group became a nation
- However many European nations claimed some sort of ethnic foundation (even though these
claims are often highly contested buy scholars of nations
Nation: social, cultural and political category, a community of people with common culture (and
usually language) sharing a sense of collective identity and belonging, and pursuing (porta avanti)
political self-determination (but not necessarily statehood=stato) and autonomy within a certain
territory. It is bigger than an ethnic group and it is usually the result of a fusion of various cultural
communities (ethnic groups, language communities, tribes) who share a will to have a common
culture and political future together.
national identity: is not easy to de ne it. Identity has a strong emotional and imaginary
component and this is what nationalists exploit in their endeavour to promote the idea of
nationhood. 19th century: culture becomes important. It was used to establish and maintain
nations. National identity is more a sense of belonging, which has been shaped by cultural
practices. The identity of a group is often de ned against the other, the strange and unfamiliar
outsider. When these di erences are magni ed, wether in a positive or negative way, we call it
othering: it is the source of many ethnic and national con icts around the world. When the other
is perceived as a threat, the con ict starts (the depiction of other in negative terms)
- Most nations do have their nation-state
- State: independent political and geographical entity with clearly de ned borders and legal
status and which has political, legal, social and cultural institutions
Nation: de ned as an “imagined (and not imaginary) community” by the historian Benedict
Anderson. The nation is seen as a socially and culturally constructed community; a group of
fi ff fl fi fifi fl fi
,people starts seeing itself as one because of its representation in the media and the public
sphere. The sense of belonging is strong (people are ready to go to ght in order to defend the
nation) and it can be achieved by sharing common language, a common sense of historical and
cultural consciousness, and costume and traditions that distinguishes the nation as unique.
- historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger invented the term “invented traditions”:
traditions that claim to be rooted in the remote past are actually modern or invented (in the 19th
century with the creation of national culture), in order to legitimise the existence of national
communities and national rituals
- Culture: the intellectual development and the set of practices and customs governing the way
of life of various communities
18th century, social changes:
People (ethnic groups): became an important political category and stronger
Nationalism: political ideology, considered a relevant factor in development of states and of
national consciousness
- it’s a word used in contradictory ways depending on the circumstance: the idea of nationalism
slides from “loving one’s country” to intolerance and genocide
- It emerges as a speci c ideology in the 19th century
- Some think that it was a side e ect of modernisation (Gellner), others claim that it’s a long-
standing ideological presence in Europe before the 19th century
- Humankind is naturally divided into cultural communities called nations
- Europe has changed: countries have more de ned political borders (less countries, states,
regional governments, more homogeneity (all the same)
- this was because politicians in the 19th century believed this would be lead to peace, less
complications.
- ideology of nationalism: get rid of big empires and give national sovereignty, then the world will
be more just.
- This is not the case; no improvement has been made.
- National cohesion
- nationalism aims to make one homogeneous culture within one boarder
- lack of regional identity, one o cial language —> this leads to the disappearance of local
dialects and variety.
Nationalist ideology:
- One’s primary political loyalty is towards one’s nation
There is evidence of this in Ukraine, there is political unity due to the war, a
common enemy
This is not universally true – e.g. there are too many identities, nationalism is often
not the strongest one
- National concord is the state’s strongest foundation
Some concord is necessary (agreement about the governing of the country) but
doesn’t mean it is the strongest foundation
States can function with many nations and ethnicities
- A state containing various nations is weak
Depends on the country, many states with many nations function, but other states
may have con ict due to a lack of balance or power given to some nations
- A nation divided over di erent states is unnatural
Can lead to war, leaders can use this ideology to claim other territory
- There should be a 1-on-1 congruence between nation and state: 1 state for each nation, 1
nation for each state
- 1 culture, 1 state (ethnolinguistic)
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, What do nationalists believe?
1. Humankind is naturally divided into nations – False
- Nations were consciously built political units
2. National loyalty is a primary human drive – False
– Humans’ primary loyalty is their closest relatives (tribes).
– Nations presuppose loyalty to a large number of unknown people, yet they feel a bond with
each other because of their shared language, values, traditions, and historical
consciousness. This sense of heritage has been consciously shaped by artists, historians,
and national institutions during the 19th and 20th centuries.
– Under certain circumstances it can become a primary human drive (War).
3. Language communities naturally desire to live within the same political boarders –
False
- The Flemish do not want to become Dutch, and the Swiss Germans do not want to
become German citizens, etc.
4. Territorial division will solve ethnic con ict – False
- New boarders create new problems, as cultural borders are more vague than political
borders. Former multi-ethnic empires were often more tolerant than modern nation-states.
19th century – nationalism was liberal, aimed for democracy
Languages and religions podcast
- For centuries it was claimed that languages had divine-source theories, in Europe especially the
Bible (languages became important when print was invented in 1500, protestantism and
translation of the Bible)
- 1) Genesis chapter 10 (Noah- great ood): it was thought that there were 72 di erent
languages in the world, grouped in 3 major categories
- The world was divided in Sem (asia), Japhet (Europe), Cham (africa) and then they procreated
Cham was considered the black sheep of the family. According to this biblical story, he was
cursed by God bc he was a bad son and for this reason he will eternally serve his brothers. It
became the cornerstone of racism: slavery is supported by this story, especially because Them
represents Africa and Africans’ skin color is di erent from European (it was seen as a symbol of
this curse). It’s allowed to take servants from Africa because they are descendants from Cham so
they are meant to serve the rest of the world. This racist thought mixes with scienti c theories in
the 19th century, when people studied di erences of skulls which belonged to di erent “racial”
groups.
- 2) Genesis chapter 11(The tower of Babel-confusion of tongues)
- People started building a very tall tower whose aim was to reach heaven; God saw what people
where up to and disliked the idea of a skyscraper so he confused the languages and people
could no longer understand each other
- Moral: the world is diversity and mess, we have to make order in it
- There are more languages than nations, but not all languages are o cial state-languages
- Also in most cases the community of speakers of a certain language are spread over multiple
countries (there are German speakers in both Germany and Austria)
- Vernacular languages are a vehicle of social emancipation, democratisation and national-
community building
- The strong link between national politics and language policies
- Language policies in many cases led to an impoverish linguistic landscape
- Language communities were forced to give up their native languages or their local dialects and
had to adopt the state language
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