Beyond the Nation? Or Back to It? Current Trends in the Sociology of Nations and Nationalism

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1072-1087
Author(s):  
Daniel Chernilo
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Nation State Formation

This article critically reviews three of the most significant debates in the sociology of nations and nationalism over the past 50 years: (1) the problem of methodological nationalism on the main features of nation-states; (2) the tension between primordialism and modernism in understanding the historicity of nations; and (3) the politics of nationalism between universalism and particularism. These three debates help us clarify some key theses in our long-term understanding of nations and nationalism: processes of nation and nation-state formation are not opposed to but compatible with the rise of globalisation and non-state forms of governance; the question ‘when is a nation?’ combines modern and pre-modern dimensions; the politics of nationalism is neither unfailingly democratic nor exclusively regressive. A key paradox that unfolds is that all nations invest heavily in the production and reproduction of their own exceptionalism.

Palimpsests of the Past: Oral History and the Art of Pointillism

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 855-877
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Bowie
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Nation State Formation

The use of oral histories is embedded in the interplay of archival limitations and shifting historiographical questions. This essay begins with a preliminary historiography of oral history usage in Asia, exploring its contrasting usages among scholars of China, Japan, India, and Thailand. However, more than filling in archival gaps, oral histories can challenge broader historiographies. Arrested multiple times, Kruba Srivichai (1878–1939) is northern Thailand's most famous monk. Illustrating a pointillist approach that draws upon hundreds of oral histories and dividing the palimpsest of Srivichai's controversial life into four time periods, this essay shows how oral histories challenge four corresponding paradigms and thereby force a reengagement with the overall narrative of Thai nation-state formation. This essay argues for the importance of oral history, not merely in “filling in gaps” in archival sources, but in challenging hegemonic historiographical paradigms.

Indigenous Peoples and Nation-States in Spanish America, 1780–2000

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florencia E. Mallon
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Nation State Formation ◽  
Independence Movements

This article shifts the discussion of race from Afro- to Indo-America, focusing on a corpus of historical studies that underline how Amerindians, anti-Indian racism, and Indigenism have played a central role in the formation of nations and national identities along the mountainous backbone of Spanish America. With the crisis of the Spanish colonial system and the rise of independence movements, emerging elites interested in projects of nation-state formation entered into new forms of negotiation and confrontation with indigenous peoples and their visions for both inclusion and autonomy. While these negotiations differed markedly from those that had earlier taken place between Natives and the colonial state, they were conditioned by the forms of conquest and colonization that had gone before, as well as by emerging political, geographic, military, and economic distinctions among the newly independent societies.

scholarly journals A New Dawn in Nationalism Studies? Some Fresh Incentives to Overcome Historiographical Nationalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Storm
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Nation State ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Nation State Formation

Nationalism studies does not seem to be a very innovative field of research. The path-breaking views of Anderson, Gellner and Hobsbawm – all published in 1983 – still form the starting point for almost all existing investigations. Moreover, most recent studies focus on one national case, which implicitly results in a vast collection of ‘unique’ trajectories. However, over the last few years a number of highly original studies on the origins of nationalism, nation-state formation, banal nationalism, methodological nationalism and nation-building in a global perspective seem to announce a new dawn. Some of these refreshing interpretations – which will be discussed in this article – clearly demonstrate that historiographical nationalism still has a preponderant role in history writing. In the concluding paragraphs I will emphasize the need to overcome not only methodological nationalism, but also the terminological and normative nationalism that still dominates our discipline.

Indigenous Spheres of Deliberation

2018 ◽  
pp. 99-110
Author(s):  
Martin Hébert
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Regional Organizations ◽  
Political Deliberation ◽  
Nation State Formation

Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination and self-government are recognized by several international instances. Deliberation plays a key role in the exercise of these rights, and its forms are as diverse as the cultures and social structures of which it is part. However, efforts to understand commonalities and differences between contexts and experiences have led to discussions of what Rodolfo Stavenhagen has termed the “indigenous situation.” This chapter looks at some ways in which self-identified Indigenous peoples have maintained, repurposed, and developed practices of political deliberation within such contexts of colonialism, nation-state formation, and capitalist expansion. A particular emphasis is put on the various scales at which deliberation takes place, be it in community life, regional organizations, or national and international political movements.

scholarly journals Flooded with memories: Emergence and development of the “memory boom”

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tijana Bajovic
Keyword(s):  
Nation State ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Cultural Climate ◽  
Scientific Discourses

This paper aims to describe the development of the recent wave of interest in memory and the past in general (so-called ?memory boom?), as well as the overall cultural climate that encouraged this ?invasion? of the past in both public and scientific discourses. While the first wave of memory boom was supposed to legitimate the emerging nation-states, the second boom signified the exhaustion of the old paradigm of nationalism, decline of the nation-state, as well as the emergence of a new paradigm: globalization.

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