Nationalism and National Identity
Nationalism is a powerful force that has led to some of the world's most dramatic examples of political change. People identify with varying degrees of strength with the nation to which they feel they belong. The emotional pull may be so strong that people are willing to fight and die for it. Nationalism contributes a sense of solidarity that is capable of motivating large numbers of people - the nation - to achieve a common political cause.
Nationalism is a territorial ideology that reflects attachment to a particular parcel of space. The first sentence of Gellner's book Nations and Nationalism reads: "Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent" (1983: 1). It remains an important aspect of modern political relationships and is both demonized and lionized by people with divergent political agendas. Agnew (2004: 224) found this neutral definition (cited from Robert Wiebe) for this most-contentious concept: "Nationalism is the desire among people who believe that they share a common ancestry and a common destiny to live under their own government on land sacred to their history." But it is not helpful to link ethnicity and nationalism in a one-to-one relationship. Where this exists, a number of authors have referred to it as ethnic nationalism. An alternative vision, according to Geertz (1994), is civic nationalism.
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Date last modified: October 8, 2009.
NSF Project (AAG,Texas State, Northern Colorado)