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The Enigma of Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Yael Tamir
Yael Tamir
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University, Israel
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Abstract

This article reviews three recently published books: Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, Liah Greenfeld's Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, and Anthony D. Smith's National Identity. It examines these books in search of clues that explain the enigma of nationalism: What are the sources of the mysterious vitality of nationalism? Why does nationalism provide the most compelling identity myth in the modern world? Why can it motivate individuals more than any other political force? This inquiry reveals an irony attendant upon the study of nationalism: the more we learn about the emergence of nationalism, the less credible is the nationalist pretense that nations are natural, continuous communities of fate. Yet it is precisely this image of nationalism that nurtures the unique power of nationalism. The power of nationalism thus seems to be embedded in self-deception.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , April 1995 , pp. 418 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1995

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References

1 Michael Walzer, “The National Question Revisited” (Tanner Lecture, Oxford, 1989), 40–45.

2 Gellner, , Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1971), 169Google Scholar.

3 A group of friends can only be identified by the feelings shared among them. Some types of behavior might indeed indicate that some individuals are friends, but these individuals may only be pretending to be friends without really bearing affectionate feelings for one another. The opposite is also possible: individuals who feel friendly toward one another may agree to disguise their friendship. Hence, an external observer can never be sure that two individuals are friends unless he or she has a way to learn about their feelings.

4 The feelings of individuals toward others may often rest in a misguided perception of social events or of the feelings of these particular others, and these misunderstandings may sometimes cause offense and personal grief. But these unfortunate results merely reflect the fact that these feelings, even though nurtured on erroneous grounds, are genuine.

5 Members of some nations may conceive of the uniqueness of their nation in terms of the values it fosters. The national culture will be seen as an expression of these values, the national history will be described as a struggle to ensure their protection and spread, and national education will be couched in their terms. Individuals who defy these values would seem to betray the nation—as the history of the term non-American testifies.

6 In the era of colonialism some nations (mostly France but also England and Spain) did see their culture in missionary terms—as a good that had universal value and whose benefits should be ex-tended to the rest of the world.

7 I discuss the differences between the terms state and nation rather extensively in Tamir, Yael, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

8 For an analysis of the sources of confusion between nation and state see Tamir, Yael, “The Right to National Self-Determination,” Social Research 58, no. 3 (1991)Google Scholar.

9 Note that even the term ethnocentric —putting one's ethnic group at the center—implies an acknowledgment that other groups exist on the periphery.

10 I accept Anderson's claim that it is the perception of the nation as a community of fate that generates the readiness to the for one's country. I contest, however, his claim that voluntary associations cannot muster this type of devotion. For a more detailed analysis of this issue, see Tamir, Yael, “Reflections on Patriotism,” in Staub, E., ed., Patriotism: Its Role and Manifestations in Individual and Group Life (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1995)Google Scholar.

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16 See Renan, Ernest, “Qu'est-ce que c'est q'une nation?” in Oeuvres complets (Paris: Colmann Levy, 1947)Google Scholar.

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