Nationalism by Lloyd Cox

Author:Lloyd Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811593208
Publisher: Springer Singapore

At the start it is important to recognize that the conception of the ethnic group or incipient nation as a group defined by exclusion implies that there is no purely definitional way of distinguishing ethnicity from other types of identity. (Armstrong 1982: 6, my italics)

Both of these quotes clearly show Armstrong’s proclivity to slide between the language of ethnicity and that of nationality. In the first, he suggests that ‘nationalism’ is often viewed as unprecedented prior to the onset of modernity, but then presumes to rebut this view with a sleight-of-hand, suggesting that intense ‘ethnic identification’ is recurrent before modernity. That may be so, but this is hardly evidence against the view that ‘nationalism’ is unprecedented before modernity. Ethnic identification is not synonymous with nationalism, for reasons already elucidated. Similarly, in the second quote he equates the ‘ethnic group’ with the ‘incipient nation,’ subsuming them both to ethnicity, which allegedly cannot be distinguished from other types of identity because it is defined by exclusion.

An acceptance of this view might divert criticism from Armstrong’s conflation of ethnicity and nationality, but it is a view that should not be accepted. All group identities are partly defined by exclusion, and it is the symbolic boundary around a group that determines who and what is excluded as well as included, and under what conditions. Yet we are able to distinguish between different types of identity with reference to the bases of exclusion, which is another way of saying the bases of the differences that define the boundary between the in-group and the out-group, us and them. With racialized identities, for example, it is the social significance attached to phenotype differences that are the bases for inclusion and exclusion and boundary maintenance. These can be distinguished from ethnic identities (which may or may not include a racial element), where the bases for exclusion is the social significance attached to cultural difference, exercised through the sorts of boundary defining mechanisms that Armstrong examines. These can be contrasted with national identities, where exclusion may encompass cultural/ethnic (and sometimes phenotype) differentiation, but is not limited to it. In addition, the boundaries of national identities are drawn by attachments to particular territories and an orientation to an existing or envisaged state, and usually but not always to national languages that are spoken by the entire population of a nation, and not just by elite groups. Finally, national identity only makes sense in the context of a plurality of nations, and I would also argue states, against which each individual national identity derives its sense of distinctiveness and exclusivity. Armstrong and those who have followed his lead are unable to show the existence of any of this in their ‘pre-modern nations.’ This is the very reason why they slip back time and again to referring to pre-modern nations as ethnic groups.

When it comes to terminology, Grosby’s analysis is rather more forthright than Armstrong’s. He has the virtue of avoiding the conceptual slippage between ethnicity and nationality that we have just

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