Belief, Ethnicity, and Nationalism

Nationalism and Ethnic Politics

Volumn 1, Issue 2, 1995, Pages 284-301

  Little, David ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMPARATIVE STUDIES; DEVELOPING COUNTRY; ETHNIC IDENTITY; IDENTITY FORMATION; INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON; INTOLERANCE; M.; NATIONALISM; RELIGION ROLE; WEBER;

SRI LANKA; SUDAN; TIBET;

EID: 0029482825     PISSN: 13537113     EISSN: 15572986     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13537119508428433     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 107. Ted Robert Gurr et al., Minorities At Risk (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 1993), p. 317: ‘Our comparative evidence and cases suggest that religious cleavages are at best a contributing factor in [ethnic] conflict, and seldom the root cause.’
2. Craig Calhoun, ‘Nationalism and Civil Society: Democracy, Diversity and Self-Determination’, International Sociology Vol. 8, No. 4 (1993), p. 405.
3. David Little, Ukraine: The Legacy of Intolerance (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 1991);
4. David Little, Sri Lanka: The Invention of Enmity (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 1994);
5. David Little and Scott W. Hibbard, Sino-Tibetan Co-Existence: Creating Space for Tibetan Self-Direction (Washington, DC: USIP Press, 1994).
6. David Little and Scott W. Hibbard, ‘Sudan: Plural Society in Distress’ (in preparation). Two other studies in the series, one on Lebanon to be written by John Kelsay and one on Nigeria, to be written by Rosalind Hackett, are in the early stages of preparation. A study of Israel is contemplated, and, finally, there will be a summary volume reviewing the general findings of the case studies.
7. Weber's seminal discussion of ‘ethnic groups’, ‘nationality’, and ‘the nation’ is to be found in Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), Vol. 1, pp. 385–98 and Vol. 2, pp. 921–6.
8. Weber's approach to the terms has been kept alive by Walker Connor (see Ethnonationalism, for example, pp. 102–4), and fits closely with the dominant emphasis these days among social scientists and historians concerning the partially artifical or ‘invented’ character of ethnic and nationalist identity.
9. (See also, Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), for an illuminating approach explicitly indebted to Weber.)
10. Economy and Society, Vol. 1, p. 387, 389; emphasis added.
11. Economy and Society, Vol. 1,p. 388.
12. Katherine Verdery, ‘Whither “Nation” and “Nationalism”?’ Daedalus, Vol. 122, No. 3 (1993), p. 38. I am assuming that Verdery's terms, which she applies here to ‘nationalism’, also apply in a similar way to ‘ethnicity’, even though these ideas, while related, are not the same thing for her.
13. ‘The word “nation” comes from the Latin and, when first coined, clearly conveyed the idea of common blood ties. It was derived from the past participle of the verb nasci, meaning to be born. And hence the Latin noun, nationem, connoting breed or race.’ Connor, Ethnonationalism, p. 94.
14. ‘The word “nation” comes from the Latin and, when first coined, clearly conveyed the idea of common blood ties. It was derived from the past participle of the verb nasci, meaning to be born. And hence the Latin noun, nationem, connoting breed or race.’ Connor, Ethnonationalism, 923.
15. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 922.
16. Connor, Ethnonationalism, p. 104.
17. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 923: ‘Undoubtedly, even the White Russians in the face of the Great Russians have always had a sentiment of ethnic solidarity, yet even at the present time they would hardly claim to qualify as a separate “nation”. The Poles of Upper Silesia, until recently, had hardly any feeling of solidarity with the “Polish Nation”. They felt themselves to be a separate ethnic group in the face of the Germans, but for the rest they were Prussian subjects and nothing else.’
18. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 925.
19. Weber links the notion of ‘chosen people’ to ethnic groups rather than nations (ibid., Vol. 1, p. 391). By speaking of nations as having ‘an intensified image of themselves as a “chosen people”’, I am simply extrapolating from Weber's suggestion that nations are ethnic groups that are more self-conscious and assertive.
20. Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 395.
21. Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 397.
22. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 176.
23. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 78. For Weber, this definition distinguishes the modern state from premodern forms of political organization, which were typically much less preoccupied with precise territorial borders, and much less capable of achieving a monopoly of legitimate force.
24. Economy and Society, Vol. 1, pp. 33–38; Vol. 2, pp. 901–4; Vol. 3, pp. 956–1005.
25. ‘[T]he word “nationalism” is itself of very recent creation. G. de Bertier de Sauvigny believes it first appeared in literature in 1798 and did not reappear until 1830. Moreover, its absence from lexographies until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests that its use was not extensive until much more recently. Furthermore, all of the examples of its early use convey the idea of identification not with the state, but with the nation as properly understood [as a “people”]. While unable to pinpoint nationalism's subsequent association with the state, it indubitably followed and flowed from the tendency to equate state and nation. It also unquestionably received strong impetus from the great body of literature occasioned by the growth of militant nationalism in Germany and Japan during the 1930s and early 1940s.’ Connor, Ethnonationalism, p. 98.
26. See Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983) for similar conclusions.
27. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 6–7.
28. See Craig Calhoun, ‘Nationalism and Ethnicity’, Annual Sociological Review, Vol. 19 (1993), pp. 229–33.
29. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 7.
30. See, for example, ‘The Levelling of Social Differences’, Economy and Society, Vol. 3, (1993), pp. 229–33.
31. E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
32. Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992);
33. Isaiah Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Nationalism’, The New York Review (21 Nov. 1991).
34. See Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
35. Greenfeld, Nationalism, p. 11.
36. Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Nationalism’, p. 19.
37. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, p. 22.
38. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, p. 22.
39. ‘From my own primary school education, a century or so ago, I recall how we students - many, probably most, of whom were first-, second-, or third-generation Americans from highly diverse national backgrounds - were told we shared a comon ancestry. We were programmed to consider Washington, Jefferson et al. as our common “founding fathers”. We memorialized Lincoln's reminder in the Gettysburg Address that four score and seven years earlier, it was “our Fathers [who had] brought forth upon this continent a new nation”. We repetitively sang that very short song-“America”-one of whose seven lines read “land where my fathers died’”. Connor, Ethnonationalism, pp. 207–8.
40. Though Connor never quite uses the term, ‘emotional a priori’ to describe the need for a feeling of solidarity that appears to underlie ethnic and national identity, he comes close. The term captures his emphasis, clearly in line with Weber's, on the fundamentally affectional or nonrational character of ethnic and national identity. See Ethnonationalism, p. 94.
41. ‘All ruling powers, profane and religious, political and apolitical, may be considered as variations of, or approximations to, certain pure types [legal-rational, charismatic and traditional]. These types are constructed by searching for the basis of legitimacy, which the ruling power claims.’ Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, p. 294.
42. See Economy and Society, Vol. 1, p. 31: ‘Action, especially social action which involves a social relationship, may be guided by the belief [Vorstellung] in the existence of a legitimate order.’ It should be noted, that even though Weber's ‘affectional’-‘charismatic’ and his ‘traditional’ types of legitimacy are considered by him to be nonrational, he does, nevertheless employ ‘belief’ in regard to both;
43. see From Max Weber, p. 295
44. and Economy and Society, Vol. 1, p. 31.
45. Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 17–25.
46. Cited in Beetham, Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics, p. 254.
47. See Little, Sri Lanka: The Invention of Enmity.
48. K.M. de Silva, Religion, Nationalism, and the State. USF Monographs in Religion and Public Policy, No. 1 (Tampa, FL: University of South Florida, 1986), p. 31.
49. Francis Deng, Mediterranean Quarterly, (1994), p. 47.
50. ‘Abboud believed that the way to unify the Sudan was to homogenize its people, which, in his view, meant transforming the south into an Islamic society.” Ann Mosley Lesch, ‘The Republic of Sudan’, in Ta'eq and Jacqueline S. Ismael (eds.), Politics and Government in the Middle East and North Africa (Miami, FL: International University Press, 1991), p. 365.
51. Robert Thurman, ‘Religious Intolerance/Tolerance in the Future of Tibet and China’, unpublished paper, p. 1.
52. International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), Forbidden Freedoms: Beijing's Control of Religion in Tibet (Washington: ICT, 1990), p. 7.
53. International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), Forbidden Freedoms: Beijing's Control of Religion in Tibet (Washington: ICT, 1990), p. 7.
54. Lodi G. Gyari, ‘Religion and the Future of Tibet’, presented at the USIP conference, ‘Tibet: Religion, Conflict, and Cooperation’ (28 Sept. 1993), p. 3: ‘The most recent formal proclamation by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, was the “Guidelines for Future Tibet's Policy and the Basic Features of its Constitution” in which His Holiness restates his decision not to play any role in the future government of Tibet. For religion, this is a significant development as it clears the way for the head of state to be a secular leader. … Whereas the Guidelines say that the ‘Tibetan polity should be founded on spiritual values’, nowhere does it refer to a ‘Buddhist nation’… or say that government would have the duty to safeguard and develop religion…’. ‘On the contrary, the Guidelines provide explanatory language on many areas, but not on religion, envisioning a full separation of church and state[;]… the only mention of religion is found in the section, “Fundamental Rights”, which simply says all Tibetan citizens shall be equal before the law without discrimination on the grounds of religion and other classifications’ (emphasis added).
55. See Little, Ukraine: The Legacy of Intolerance, pp. 25–7, 67–74.