Rethinking Nationalism and Ethnicity by Hans-Rudolf Wicker

Author:Hans-Rudolf Wicker [Wicker, Hans-Rudolf]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781859739310
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 1997-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

8

Ethnic Revivals Within Nation-States? The Theories of E. Gellner and A. D. Smith Revisited

Natividad Gutierrez

To the memory of Professor E. Gellner

Culture and ethnicity are rapidly overlapping, to the extent that the fragile (or imaginary) line that used to separate these two key concepts of the social sciences is now becoming redundant. The interpretation of ethnicity as a host of representations of the subjectivity and social practices of minority peoples (stateless peoples) is beginning to lose its conventional attributes of cultural inferiority and social marginality, attributes attached to the ways of life of rural or non-industrialized sectors, and reproduced in the ambience of domestic life by national or international immigrants, either in host or national states. During the age of nation-building, despite systematic assimilation or extermination, unwanted ethnicity managed to survive, and gradually, it is becoming visible, organized and militant. Culture, on the other hand, as the medium of communication and cohesion of peoples of industrial nations, also claims ethnicity. A nation’s display of a prestigious ethnic past which recollects solid experience and tradition, not artifice, invention or fabrication, is the source that provides authenticity and a collective desire for renovation and posterity.

How can we explain today’s renewed interest in the ethnic element and its corollary, ethnicity, when it was dumped onto the fringe of modernism and when it became the antithesis of progress and a symbol of backwardness? A number of factors taking place towards the beginning of the 1990s may help provide an answer: namely, the emergence of new ethnic states after the conditions propitiated by the end of the Cold War; scholarly re-consideration ofrelentless local expressions of pride in language, tradition, or nostalgia, largely discredited by the positivistic schools of scientificism and international socialism; the emergence of transnational markets and the demise of commercial frontiers; as well as the debate concerning free identity expression advanced by globalization and postmodernist thesis.

In this chapter, I argue that the renewal of ethnicity is less a result of external forces, than a process of self-discovery and assertiveness of ethnic ties due to the gradual access of minorities to the culture of nationalism fostered by the modern state. It is essential for this discussion, however, to clarify a contrasting theoretical trait common to studies of nationalism, this being the establishment of a dividing line between ethno-nationalism and ethnic revivalism. Ethno-nationalism is understood here to mean politicized demands of stateless ethnic groups via negotiation or coercion (e.g. political parties or armed movements) seeking to achieve sovereignty and self-rule. Ethnic revivalisms, on the other hand, are organized demands of ethnic peoples pressing for cultural and linguistic recognition within the administrative and territorial boundaries of a nation-state.

Leaders or intellectuals of ethnic revivalisms, through organized campaigns, cultural groups, public meetings and publications, seek to obtain adequate official treatment concerning the special needs of complex ethnic ways of life, by demanding the implementation of effective bureaucratic action (e.g. multiculturalist policies and tolerance to ethnic diversity). While ethno-nationalisms theoretically represent a threat to the national state, ethnic revivalisms do not pose an end to the nation-state.

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