DEFINITIONS

Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds

that the political and the national unit should be
congruent. It is a theory of political legitimacy.
Gellner works with Webers definition of the state as that
agency within society that possesses the
monopoly of legitimate violence. He notes that states only
exist where there is division of labour, and the
state is that instit or set of instits specifically concerned
with the enforcement of order (whatever else they
may also be concerned with).
Stateless societies cannot, conceptually, experience
nationalism. The state is a prior to nationalism.
The concept of nation is more complicated, as it is seen as
natural. Having a nation is not an inherent
attribute of humanity, but it has now come to appear as
such.
The state has certainly emerged without the help of the
nation. Some nations have certainly emerged
without the blessings of their own state. It is more debatable
whether the normative idea of the nation, in its
modern sense, did not presuppose the prior existence of the
state.
Thus for two men to be in the same nation requires two
things: a common culture, understandings,
meanings etc; and the acknowledgement that the other is a
fellow national and the recognition of mutual
rights and duties to each other in virtue of shared
membership in it.
THE TRANSITION TO AN AGE OF NATIONALISM
The modern economy needs substitutable and thus
mobile people on a large scale, it needs all people to be

specialised but to move between specialisations. Therefore it

is required that all have a common education,
a similar culture. It is not the case, as Elie Kedourie claims,
that nationalism imposes homogeneity; it is rather that
a
homogeneity imposed by objective, inescapable imperative
eventually appears on the surface in the form of
nationalism.
Early industrialism means population explosion, rapid
urbanisation, labour migration, and also the economic
and political penetration of previously more or less inwardturned communities, by a global economy and a
centralising polity. (...) a new kind of Babel, with new cultural
boundaries that are not stable but in constant and dramatic
movement, and which are seldom hallowed by any kind of
custom.
It is not the case that nationalism imposes homogeneity out
of a wilful cultural Machtbedrfniss; it is the
objective need for homogeneity which is reflected in
nationalism. If it is the case that a modern industrial
state can only function with a mobile, literate, culturally
standardised, interchangeable population, as we
have argued, then the illiterate, half-starved populations
sucked from their erstwhile rural cultural ghettoes
into the melting pots of shanty-towns yearn for incorporation
into some one of those cultural pools which
already has, or looks as if it might acquire, a state of its own,
with the subsequent promise of full cultural
citizenship, access to primary schools, employment, and
all.Thus his argument is not functionalist:
this quote reveals the arguments compatibility with
incentive compatibility constraints.
Often these people can vacillate btw two or more cultures for
a while. Choosing the culture often depends
on whether you (and your children) can assimilate and stop
being prejudiced, which makes ostensible
physical traits and deeply engrained religious-cultural

habits relevant for national membership. There are

tons of cultures that could potentially become nations, i.e.
acquire a state, and one cant tell
beforehand which will succeed. Most die out, or at least dont
become national (South Germans, small
Scottish villages, etc.), and some succeed. The concept of
the national awakener (awakening a latent
nation) is thus a bad image, for he does not awaken a latent
nation, but rather brings one together: Nations
as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an
inherent though long-delayed political destiny, are a
myth; nationalism, which sometimes takes pre-existing
cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes
invents them , and often obliterates pre-existing cultures:
that is a reality, for better or worse, and in
general an inescapable one. Those who are its historic
agents know not what they do, but that is another
matter. Thus, nationalism is the crystallisation of new
cultures, not the awakening of old ones. (49)
The reason we dont have a global state is that
industrialisation came unequally and the required critical
masses are sufficient in current states. He mentions in
passing that having out-groups allowed nations to
have a token, a name.
WHAT IS A NATION?
The two aspects of a definition of nation given before (the
voluntary aspect and the cultural aspect) are not
co-extensive with what we mean by nation. The voluntary
aspect makes no sense given sub-cultures, gangs,
etc, the cultural aspect makes no sense if we consider
previous eras where cultural allegiances were
independent of national ones.
Nations are thus defined in terms of will and culture, but only
in the era of nationalism. Nationalism creates
nations, not the other way around. But this doesnt mean
that they are merely thinker-elite driven

constructs: they are necessities of the historical

phenomenon which is industrialisation. The thinker-elites
just filled in (incarnated) a(n objective) void that was asking
to be filled: we needed a common culture (see
the incentive compatibility comment given above).
Nationalism is, essentially, the general imposition of a
high culture on society, where previously low
cultures had taken up the lives of the majority (...) of the
population.