Margaret
Canovan, Nationhood and Political Theory
Chapter 2: The case against nationalism [5]
Nationalist claims have two essentially different justifications, mirroring the two senses of “people”:
ROMANTIC-COLLECTIVIST NATIONALISM [6]
Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872): Italian nationalist who argued that God had a plan for humanity such that it was divided into “natural” nations each of which had a particular mission, contributing to the good of humanity in general. Co-nationals should reject the “false gospels” of individualism and materialism and embrace the high calling to sacrifice themselves for the unity and liberty of their nation. For Mazzini, devotion to the nation was perfectly compatible both with the wider cause of humanity and with a respect for the rights and interests of the individual.
Many Romantic nationalists weren’t so explicitly theological, but all saw nations as “natural”. German nationalists in particular saw languages as indicators of nationhood.
Fichte: “Wherever a separate language is found, there a separate nation exists, which has the right to take independent charge of its own affairs and to govern itself”.
Obvious retort: as few as 2.5% of Italians spoke Italian when Italy was unified.
Response: nations are four-dimensional, and not everyone in a nation will speak the same language at its origin, but eventually, when the nation reaches “full flower” they will. (Comparison, the Marxist theory of classes that start out existing only in-themselves and only when they achieve class-consciousness are they “for themselves”)
But: this is highly dubious and obviously question-begging if sharing a language is the result of nation-building practices, as it almost invariably is.
More seriously, obviously the idea of “natural” nations is very dubious. Mazzini himself said that Italy was the most clearly defined nation because of its geographical shape, but he also wanted to include Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica.
LIBERAL-INDIVIDUALIST NATIONALISM [9]
The primary motivation behind this kind of nationalism is self-determination.
Mill: there should be national self-government “where the sentiment of nationality exists in any force” since “this is merely saying that the question of government ought to be decided by the governed”
Harry Beran argues for a national right to self-determination from the premise that individuals have a right to personal self-determination.
Margalit and Raz: argue for national self-determination from the importance for individuals’ self-identity of membership in “encompassing groups”.
Criticisms:
1. “Liberal nationalist accounts of the ‘right’ to self-determination tend to take peace and order for granted, treating the world as if it were a legal order with enforceable laws. It is of the essence of nationalist, however, to be a revolutionary doctrine, calling for the destruction of existing states...” - i.e., ignores the costs of secession
2. Walker’s criticism: i.e., romantic nationalism was at least stable, with a set number of classical nations, but culturalist nationalism makes listing nations a tricky matter, and standards are either too strict or allow in all sorts of not-classically-regarded-as-nations groups
3. Self-determination ignores the role of historic association with lands
Sum:
The mistake that the more humane nationalists have made has not so much been to regard nation-states as desirable but to radically underestimate the difficulties and costs of achieving them in a world where nations are neither natural nor ubiquitous. [13]
NATIONHOOD AS A TACIT ASSUMPTION IN POLITICAL THEORY [13-14]
Canovan will argue that “the existence of nations is a tacit presupposition of most current discourse in political theory, with serious implications for its content and relevance.”
Two aims of the argument:
Qualifications:
Chapter 3: Democratic theory: government by the people [16]
THE GEOGRAPHIC LIMITS OF THE PEOPLE [17]
MEMBERSHIP OF THE PEOPLE [19]
COLLECTIVE IDENTITY [20-25]
Differences between a polity and a voluntary association (like a tennis club):
“If a confirmed individualist asks why individuals should heed such demands for loyalty, the simplest answer is that a polity which cannot successfully command the loyalty of its members will sooner or later be replaced by one that can, on terms decided by the latter” [22].
Conundrum:
If (as both theory and experience suggest) popular self-rule is made possible only by the rare presence of a ‘people’ with a strong collective identity, why is it that modern democratic theorists are so silent on the subject?
The explanation is, I suspect, that the theorists in question live in comparatively stable, well-established states that had early experience of nation-building and have for centuries contained ‘peoples’ with a significant degree of collective identity. [24]
This, of course, means problems for places (like the former Yugoslavia) where this cannot be taken for granted.
Chapter 4: Social justice: looking after our people [27]
Political question:
what sort of polity would have to exist for contemporary ideas about social justice to make sense? Would it have to be a state that was also a community? And is a state that is a community in fact a nation? [27]
Arguments for inescapability of political community as a condition of social justice:
· “Logically, any theory about the proper distribution of social goods must include some specification of the boundaries within which distribution is to go on, and some reason why the goods inside those boundaries should be regarded as shared assets.” [27/8]
· Politically, redistribution requires a body with the political power to carry it out.
· AND, if we are liberals, this body cannot simply use coercion, but must have the consent of those affected
The solution for all of these is a national community with attitudes of trust.
BOUNDARIES AND BONDS [28]
Implicit in discussions of social justice is a presupposition about a community of obligation:
It would be very odd to suggest (for example) that the passengers who happen to be on a cross-Channel ferry on a particular day constitute a group whose luggage ought to be redistributed according to Rawls’s principles of justice [29]
Rawls has assumed that we are part of a “closed society” whose “members enter it only by birth and leave it only by death”. If this is the community of obligation, then that would worry libertarians like Nozick and Hayek.
SOCIAL SOLIDARITY AND EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT [30]
If we assume...that justice requires a scale of redistribution beyond the powers of voluntary organizations, and furthermore that it should be brought about by compulsory but consensual means, then what is required is a political community...whose inhabitants share sufficient sense of mutual trust and obligation to generate and support effective sharing. [30]
31: the British welfare state owes its existence to the surge of patriotism following WWII. Does this suggest that patriotism strong enough requires external attack?
Miller: Explicitly defends nationhood as the community and argues that those who lose out when we institute redistribution are more likely to accept this “if they regard themselves as bound to the beneficiaries by strong ties of community: the stronger the ties, the more egalitarian the distribution can be.” [Is this true? Parent-child bonds are perhaps the strongest, but are very rarely egalitarian.]
Rawls does not argue for a “self-contained national community” [TJ 457], yet presupposes it. This seems inconsistent given what he says about abstracting from the “arbitrariness found in nature” – after all, isn’t the location of one’s birth an arbitrary fact?
Pogge argues that Rawls’s theory should be cosmopolitan
BUT: is this politically possible?
Chapter 6: What is a nation? [50]
Nations are both highly important and very unobtrusive. That they can be both is testament to their complexity:
I shall argue that all these peculiarities are interconnected, that the power of nationhood is indeed linked with its elusiveness, and that nations are exceedingly complex phenomena, the key to which lies in their ability to mediate between different aspects of social and political life. [50]
NATIONS AS STATES [51]
Common practice – the “United Nations,” “International Relations,” National Anthem, “Nationality,” “Nationalization”
Virtues: reminds us that nations are political phenomena.
Downside: Nations are not identical with states-
2 Nations, one state: Canada
2 States, one nation: East and West Germany
NATIONS AS CULTURAL COMMUNITIES [52]
What is it that states lack that means they’re not nations? Well, when French Revolutionary armies carried the idea of “State-as-Nation” across Europe (Civic Nationalism), German intellectuals responded with a romantic nationalism based on culture: Meinecke contrasted “political nations” formed from above with “cultural nations” formed from below.
But what demarcates a culture? One suggestion is language (“Wherever a separate language is found, there a separate nation exists” – Fichte)
BUT:
1. As Hobsbawm (ch. 2, pp. 54-9) argues, what counts as a language rather than a particular dialect is a matter of dispute, and in fact, nations might be used to delineate particular languages rather than the other way around.
2. Separate language not necessary for separate cultures or nations (Scots and Americans speak English, predominantly)
3. Separate language not sufficient for separate nations (and possibly culture, although that’s less certain) – see Switzerland.
So, if language (the form of expression) is not what makes a culture, what about the content of what is expressed? Gray: nationhood is “membership of a single moral community”. But what does this mean? And what does it require? Does it mean membership in a single particular religion? If so, most modern nations do not seem to require this.
Tamir suggests both that sharing a culture means sharing a nationality, and that culture should be seen as “embodying patterns of behaviour, language, norms, myths and symbos that enable mutual recognition.” [Liberal Nationalism, 68]
BUT: this is circular: which particular patterns of behaviour? Tamir’s answer is “the set of specific features that enable members of a nation to distinguish between themselves and others is culture.” So in other words, nation is culture, but culture is defined as what members of a nation share.
Also: if you pick out any particular features (e.g. Orwell’s “gentle manners and bad teeth” [53]), these are likely to change long before the nation ceases to exist.
Why not, then, skip the middle man of culture and focus on mutual recognition?
NATIONS AND SUBJECTIVE IDENTITY [54]
National communities are constituted by belief: a nationality exists when its members believe that it does. [David Miller, “In Defence of Nationality”]
Renan: nation as a daily plebiscite.
BUT if the nation is “willed” by its members, does that mean that nations can be willed in and out of existence, and that one’s nationality is entirely a matter of one’s choice?
No, says Canovan, because:
Thus, as Benedict Anderson says, “it is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny”—that is, the artificial nation is experienced as objective by each individual person, they feel that they inherit it rather than create it.
[What this means, however, is that liberals (like Miller and Tamir?) who point to the subjective character of nationality are being disingenuous if they claim this means that we really have a choice about it.]
If nationality really appears to be inherited, though, does
that mean that nations are ethnic groups?
NATIONS AS ETHNIC GROUPS [56]
Many “peoples” have appeared to constitute nations in history: Jews, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Huns, Sioux (and other tribes), Zulu. Turks are not considered Germans, despite residency, Czechs split from Slovaks...
BUT: what about Switzerland and the United States? And is there really any nation that is ethnically homogenous.
Anthony Smith suggests that, even though modern nations are not ethnically pure, each is built around a historic ethnic core that continues to perform a vital role in providing the nation with the historical depth that modern polities need if they are to function properly [Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations]. Linking nationality with ethnicity helps to explain the following features of nations:
PROBLEMS:
Ethnicity may have as doubtful a history as nations: although Jews, Armenians, Japanese and inhabitants of a specific Tyrolean Valley [58] have ethnicities traceable back centuries, what comprises ethnic groups is remarkably fluid (see also Renan’s point about anthropological definitions changing). Eugeen Roosens and Paul Brass both argue that, while ethnicities cannot be invented from scratch, a certain family association can be expanded or contracted by political manipulation. (See, for example, the definition of race in America.)
Thus it’s safest to say that nations are “political communities that are experienced as if they were communities of kin, but the ‘as if’ is vital.” [59]
MODERNIZATION AND NATION-BUILDING [59]
Ernest Gellner argues that nations are invented and inauthentic (“it is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way around” Nations and Nationalism, 55), but serve certain roles that modernity has made vital:
·
the needs of a modern economy
a modern economy needs mobile and adaptable workers, who must be able to
communicate in a common language and have skills that only a primary
education can provide.
·
the emotional needs of modern populations
with the decline of religion and the monarchy, there is nothing left for us to
love
·
the tactical needs of modern politicians
”an effective nationalism develops where it makes political sense for an
opposition to the government to claim to represent the nation against the
present state” [John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State 382]
Ironically, according to Gellner, nationalism destroys cultures rather than preserves them, because minority cultures are subsumed and changed into a new “national” culture that is entirely fake.
BUT:
If Gellner were correct, then
a) Nations should be universal, because the above functions are necessary everywhere, and there should be no “natural” nations to provide barriers to nation-building
b) nation-building should be easy for the same reason.
But, according to Liah Greenfeld, neither is true.
NATION-BUILDING AND MODERNIZATION [62-64]
Where Gellner argues that modernity brings about nations, Greenfeld argues that specific conditions gave rise to comparatively few nations (and each distinctive) as accidents of specific historical developments, and it was these nations that helped to usher in the modern age.
That is:
1. The English Nation was born out of the new expanded nobility of Tudor times which asserted its status not by pushing the rest of the population down, but by asserting the superiority of every Englishman.
2. This idea of the nation, with its new egalitarianism, nurtured democracy as an ideal.
3. When the Stuarts angered the nobility, there was already a sense of national right that could be asserted in opposition to the right of kings.
Thus English nationalism was (a) unique at first, (b) egalitarian and individualistic. It was this kind of ideology that was exported to the New World. Even French nationality is derivative, and also distinct, in that it took on the features of the monarchy that it supplanted with its concentration of authority, the sanctity, and the passion for glory. In contrast the distinct Russian and German nationalities have their own collective and elitist characters.
Important points on which Greenfeld seems to be right:
1. Nations are not universal
2. The advent of the nation created a new kind of political community with enormous political significance.