Liah Greenfeld and Eric Malczewski
For several years, the authors of this essay have begun their classes on nationalism by asking students to draw a pictogram of their “world”—the reality that they experience as significant. These pictograms usually consist of some indication of our globe, often with national flags on it, houses representing homes or schools, and figures of generic humans, often drawn in one or another way that stresses their basic interchangeability. The striking feature of these telegraphic representations has been their uncompromising secularism: they are focused on this mundane experiential world; transcendental forces appear nowhere on these drawings. God, clearly, is absent from these students’ thoughts, even though many of these students would define themselves as religious. Their image of significant reality differs dramatically from the image we find represented in Western art even as late as El Greco, the canvases being filled with the depiction of God and his saints, canvases in which all of the action—everything of significance, that is to say, everything to which the artist strives to attract attention—takes place above the heads of diminutive mortals crowded into the lower quarter (or less) of the painting. The second salient characteristic of the students’ images is the stressed equality of the humans, again contrasting with the representations of humanity in the art of the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, in which the size of the figure quite often serves as the indication of the person’s social status.
Our students’ pictograms invariably reflect the modern form of consciousness—the secular and egalitarian image of reality that was brought into being by nationalism (Greenfeld 2006: 64–92). Nationalism is the constitutive element of modernity, and it provides the foundational form of consciousness in all societies defined as nations (Greenfeld 1992: 3–26). The perspective of nationalism is the cultural (i.e. symbolic) foundation of modern reality and the foundation on which our students build their identities (Greenfeld 1992; Greenfeld and Eastwood 2007). Our students live in the world created by nationalism.
In a short essay such as the present one, the best way to define culture is by analogy to DNA (for a detailed discussion of culture and the nature of social science, see Greenfeld and Malczewski 2009; Greenfeld 2006: 115–34, 203–23; Greenfeld 2005: 101–16). In human society, culture is the functional equivalent of the genetic code in animal species: whereas animal social orders are replicated genetically, the bases of our social orders are transmitted symbolically, or culturally. This means that the information contained in a particular form of culture is represented in various social, political, economic, and other arrangements in human society, just as the information contained in a particular genetic code is represented in the patterned behaviors of animals in various situations. Understanding the form of culture that serves this function in a particular society is, therefore, the central task in understanding that society, just as understanding the genotype of a species is the central basis for understanding that species (Durkheim 1995; Greenfeld and Malczewski 2009; Greenfeld 2007: 132–36). An accurate understanding of nationalism brings us much closer to the accurate understanding of the culture of modern society—its politics, economy, and all other aspects of modernity— than any other approach we can take.
The form of consciousness known as nationalism emerged in sixteenth-century England in the aftermath of the War of the Roses (Greenfeld 1992: 3–87). As a result of the war, the feudal aristocracy was decimated, thereby creating a vacuum at the top of the social hierarchy. The new, Tudor, dynasty, however, needed an aristocracy, and so a new aristocracy was created out of especially talented and educated individuals coming from the lower social strata. In the form of consciousness characteristic of the medieval society of orders, such social mobility was impossible; social reality was envisioned as a hierarchical arrangement in which the three fundamental orders of men—the military nobility, the clergy, and the toilers—were as closed to interpenetration as the different species of life are to interbreeding (Greenfeld 2001b: 886). The experience of the new English aristocracy contradicted this image of reality, and its members sought to rationalize this experience—i.e. explain it and render it legitimate—in some other terms.
Needing a new form of consciousness to explain their experiences, these Englishmen appropriated the term “nation”—a term which in the context of the medieval church councils referred to a “political and cultural elite.” The word “nation,” used in this very dignified sense, became the synonym of “people” (which designated the general population of commoners, but specifically had the connotation of “rabble,” or the least respected classes), and this equation had the effect of elevating the populace—all of the “people”—to the status of an elite. The implication of this conceptual innovation was that all Englishmen were thereafter imagined as being, and thus seen as, equal. In addition, since the term “nation” in particular meant “political elite” (which is to say the bearer of sovereign authority) the people thus saw themselves as, and so became, sovereign, too. The concept of sovereignty, however, only permitted one supreme authority; sovereignty could not be shared, and so the people replaced God as the bearer of sovereignty. Nationalism—at its root being the definition of the people as a nation—thus offered a fundamentally secular and egalitarian view of the world based on the principle of popular sovereignty. This new form of consciousness provided an acceptable, positive interpretation of the new aristocrats’ experience. Thus emerged a new cultural framework through which experience was imagined and shaped.
Nationalism became the characteristic form of consciousness in England by 1600, then spreading first to the English colonies in America, then to France and Russia in the eighteenth century, and extending throughout Europe in the nineteenth century and around the world by the end of the twentieth century (Greenfeld 1992: 397, 89, 189, 275; Greenfeld 2001b: 897; Eastwood 2006). As the cultural foundation of modernity, nationalism provides the essential meaningful orientation to reality (a symbolic map, if you will) and a blueprint of the social order in all modern societies (those societies defined as nations). For this reason, all the institutional structures of these societies are shaped by it.
To reiterate, there are three qualities that constitute nationalism’s form of consciousness: (1) the picture of reality that it offers is essentially secular; (2) it is fundamentally egalitarian in its view of members of the nation; and (3) it assumes popular sovereignty. Each one of these features has important implications. We shall list some of them briefly.
To begin with, because nationalism is essentially secular, the value of the experience of this world is heightened and so is the value of an individual’s life. Gone are the times of impatient waiting for communion with the eternal and an eternal existence that follows death—a characteristic feature of the experience of the religious society that modern society replaced. Life on this earth is all there is, and suffering and discontentment in this reality are thus intolerable. Modern individuals must take control of their fates, change arrangements that they find unacceptable, pursue happiness here, and mitigate suffering that is no longer seen as a part of a divine plan. Concerns about this world and this life interest all members of the nation (all of whom are interchangeable in their generalized capacity to occupy the available social positions), and their interest and subsequent activism are viewed as legitimate. Nationalism’s principles of egalitarianism and popular sovereignty reinforce the effects of secularism.
Given the secular quality of national communities, we understand such terms as “Jewish nation” and “Islamic nation” designating groups that are understood to be fundamentally oriented to a transcendental reality to be very different; typically, such terms are indicative of forms of religious nationalism, with religion itself existing on nationalism’ssufferance (Greenfeld 2006: 93–114, 135–44). Unlike forms of consciousness that limit activism or political participation to members of select social strata, nationalism legitimates and fosters universal participation.
Nationalism’s most important political implication is the state (Greenfeld 2006: 77). This characteristically modern form of government is impersonal and necessarily bureaucratic: its legitimacy is not tethered to the individuals who staff it. Individuals are socially mobile within nationalist society and in its central institutions, and nationalism’s egalitarian principle legitimizes staffing the various positions in the state with anyone qualified for the job. The state stands in stark contrast to personal government (such as kingship). The state both demands a flexible system of stratification and strengthens such a system. What is more, with the principle of popular sovereignty placing the source of authority in the national community, the government is necessarily representative. The officers who occupy positions in the state do so on behalf of the people, who maintain the right of recall of their public servants. Even in exceptional cases in which the state is seen to be personalized (Hitler and Stalin are two striking examples), the apparent autocrat is merely a remarkably powerful bureaucrat representing the authority of the people. Processes of democratization are manifest in nationalist societies to a degree not seen in other forms of society; the fundamentally egalitarian society based on the principle of popular sovereignty by definition and in practice yields democracy, which, of course, may take different forms. Liberal or individualistic democracies (such as those found in the US or Britain) differ from social or popular democracies (as in the USSR or Nazi Germany); popular dictatorships are a type of democracy, differing from liberal democracy in the form of the implementation of the same fundamental principles (Greenfeld 1993: 327).
Modern economy (i.e. the economy oriented toward growth, or capitalism) is also a product of nationalism (Greenfeld 2001a, 2006: 176). Despite common belief to the contrary, it can develop in the most liberal of democracies (e.g. Britain and the United States) as well as in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes (e.g. 1930s Germany, Chile under Pinochet, and, today, China); the historical record (indeed, a mere survey of the daily papers) demonstrates, emphatically, that it is so. The competition for economic growth is one of the forms of competition for prestige manifest in nationalist culture. Membership in a nation endows the individual with a sense of dignity and pride that is shared with the perceived dignity of the nation itself, thereby fueling the inter-national competition for prestige. Prestige is, however, a relative value, which makes such competition endless; in nations competing for prestige in the economic sphere, the result is the striving for ever-increasing wealth. Not all nations choose the economy as the sphere of international competition; some, such as Russia, may value military power, or something else—the choice depends on which sphere the nation in question feels most comfortable in at the outset. The open social structure implied in nationalism (so important for staffing the state bureaucracy) provides ideal conditions under which mobile labor can develop; therefore, it favors economic competition.
Another product of nationalism is science (Greenfeld 2006: 43–63, 145–61). Indeed, as a social institution, science emerged as a direct result of burgeoning national consciousness in seventeenth-century England. Science was advocated as the proof of English genius, serving to increase the nation’s glory. As it did not exist at the time anywhere else, science provided a field on which the English could compete successfully for prestige. (It is interesting as well as important to note that in the seventeenth century England was the only nation on Earth, the only society with a national consciousness; this did not stop English contemporaries, however, from assuming that the rest of the world had national consciousnesses, too.) Additionally, of course, the secular focus of nationalism invested empirical reality with deep meaning, and what intellectual endeavor was better qualified to decipher this meaning than science—oriented to the understanding of empirical reality, which, to boot, rejected the intellectual authority of privileged estates and declared every man to be capable of this understanding? Today, the international competition for scientific advancement is as robust as ever, and many of the answers to questions concerning the nature of reality come from this institution.
Nationalism, however, made society exceedingly confusing: all nationalist societies are anomic. The concept of anomie, one of Emile Durkheim’s best known contributions to our understanding of culture, refers to a state of cultural insufficiency, a systemic problem in the process of culture reflecting inconsistency between or the lack of coordination among various institutional structures or concretized culture, which results in the sending of contradictory messages to individuals: in a state of anomie, one is left devoid of a model for behavior (Durkheim 1951; Greenfeld 2006: 211–13). Given that culture shapes the ends to be desired by humans and provides the means for their attainment, the failure of culture to perform its function leaves individuals groping for solutions. Anomie is thus rightly understood as a culture-generative force, being the spur to symbolic imagination and, thereby, the premier cause of cultural change. Although nationalism, providing the foundation of modern social structure, proved to be an effective form of consciousness for those who adopted it, it also left them with the responsibility to fill in the details that their nationalist culture did not provide, such as finding one’s place in this new reality. The noble doctrine that all men (and later women, too) were created equal was not very helpful: When everybody was defined as being as good as anyone else, every relationship of authority and every reward for individual achievement became problematic. Above all, a guide to this egalitarian, anomic world needed to include instructions for modern people charged with shaping their own individual identities and, trying, with varying success (and often without success at all), to figure out how to live in it—that is to say, to figure out what behavior is expected and appropriate.
It was literature, specifically the genre known as the modern novel, which for a long time provided such a guide. The premise of the modern novel is that to live in modern society is not simple. The modern novel depicts the social labyrinth negotiated by everyone from harlots, scullery maids, and orphans, to squires, men of the world, and fashionable young ladies—and the often terrible personal cost of such negotiation. The novel developed in early eighteenth-century England (although elements important to its genesis, such as casuistical literature, autobiography, travel literature, and romance, were known before), at a time when English society, including the full complement of its institutions and patterns of behavior, was being reshaped from the perspective of nationalism. The tremendous social mobility that was clearly extant in the time of Shakespeare was building to its acme in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century. This development placed a burden on those mobile social actors who struggled to learn how to behave in their new social positions, those actors seeking to negotiate the split in terrain created by the radical shift in the social order and the absence of clearly established hierarchies. The novel provided English readers with models for behavior, providing illustrations of contemporary life and the unfolding and resolution of various problems characteristic of it. The attention paid by authors such as Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson to the depiction of true-to-life experience was typical of the preoccupation with understanding the new social order; what was equally typical was the degree to which the English public devoured novels. The advent of the French novel followed identical lines: the novel flourishes after the advent of nationalism in France, with interpreters of social experience such as Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert penning what are nothing less than guides to life in modern society (whatever the artistic merits of their work might be). Today, our students typically look to popular music, television, and film for models of behavior and for interpretations of their experience and a language for describing it; until about World War II, literature was the chief, if not the only, source of such knowledge.
Much of the modern novel is devoted to the subject of love—another, perhaps most surprising, product of nationalism, which also emerged in sixteenth-century England (Greenfeld forthcoming). The story of Abelard and Eloise is well known, of course, proving that the capacity for “love” existed; however, any mental experience characteristic of a particular culture—be it reading, writing, enjoying the taste of a particular delicacy, or falling in love—can be experienced only on the condition that the capacity for such experience exists within human nature itself. The existence of a capacity, nevertheless, while it may explain certain cases of deviance (such as was the unique and, therefore, tragic story of Abelard and Eloise), cannot account for the virtual universalization in a particular period and society of what was earlier a deviant experience. Yet, this is what happened with love in sixteenth-century England. “Love” was an old word which was commonly used before the sixteenth century with a meaning similar to that of the original concept of eros in Hesiod—an ecstatic, self-transcendent, desire. It is because of this general meaning that “love” could be used to express both the lofty sentiment of Christian love and even the divine love of God itself (agape, caritas, eros as used in Christian theology) and the base (because carnal, essentially sinful) sexual lust. The sixteenth-century English concept of love—which is our concept—was dramatically different. While it implied the very opposite attitude to sex from the one that characterized Christian thinking, it retained clear sexual connotations. Thus the connection of love to lust seems obvious, but the other older usages were completely eclipsed, becoming foreign to us.
The new, as it came to be known later, “romantic” love was defined as a central expression of the sovereignty of the self, the supreme movement of the sovereign human spirit. Social arrangements that contradicted it became, by definition, inauthentic—false, wrong, morally abhorrent. Love made it possible for free and therefore rootless modern individuals, defined only as equal to all other individuals, to find their proper place and to define themselves. It was, therefore, an identity-forming device; this feature, above all else, explains the tremendous importance of the emotional complex of love in our lives. Love requires no effort whatsoever; as Shakespeare’s Juliet says: “God join’d my heart to Romeo’s.” Love happens to one, one falls into it, thus leading to the discovery of one’s true identity directly, filling life with meaning and at once reconciling one to it, even to the inevitability of death. What makes love an expression of the self nevertheless is the immediate recognition of the true love’s object, the One, that particular her or him who is one’s destiny and yet, paradoxically, is most freely chosen. One’s identity, one’s true self, is found in that other person and in what he or she sees in one. The unrivalled importance of love in the modern life cannot be explained by the fact that it delivered sex in a new package (adding to its legitimacy when sanctioned by marriage as well as the legitimacy by association with the ultimate expression of the authentic self). No, it is the invaluable aid that love provides to us in defining who we are that is responsible for such centrality.
For four centuries since Shakespeare we have been taught the lesson of Così fan tutte— that true love is a chimera, that we are fools to pine for it, that we should reconcile ourselves to this fact and be satisfied with what there is, some sexual infatuation growing into habitual attachment under the protection of social norms. But, despite all the lessons, people continue to believe that—to quote the Beatles’ very famous distillation of Shakespeare’s message put to music—“All you need is love/All you need is love/All you need is love, love/Love is all you need” (Lennon and McCartney 1967).
The modern family is a result of the advent of marriage for love and the egalitarian conception of society implied in nationalism. A society in which the bond of love between two individuals is seen as the only legitimating force behind marriage is dramatically different from a society in which marriage is seen as fulfilling the needs of a familial collectivity or some larger social obligation. What is more, nationalism has shaped the roles within marriage such that the duties and responsibilities of the husband and wife are matters of personal choice: fathers may be primarily responsible for childcare and wives may be the breadwinners; that is to say, the ancient institution of the family falls under the influence of egalitarianism and the increased value of the individual. Marriage is sanctioned by an impersonal entity (the state) that derives its force from the nation itself, religion playing a secondary role as a legitimating institution. And, as we know so well from the current debates over the question of gay marriage in the US and the steadily growing support for it in the general public, the influence of nationalism continues to grow.
Studies of the nature of modern society have not always born fruit that has sated appetites for understanding the social systems under question. The classical dichotomies such as Feudalism/Capitalism, Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft, and Organic versus Mechanical solidarity that have been bequeathed to us by our disciplinary forebears fail to grasp the constitutive element of modern society and, therefore, do little to describe accurately, much less to explain, the nature of the world we live in (Greenfeld 2006: 64–92; Marx 1978; Toennies 1963; Durkheim 1964). Additionally, theories of society and, therefore, theories of modernity that are based on some form of historical materialism—such theories being widespread in the social sciences (seen now and seen frequently in the variants of economic determinism, for example the modernization theory of the 1950s and 1960s) that were developed upon a particular view of history, a view in which history was understood to progress teleologically, advancing through a series of stages culminating in modernity (a point at which all societies would eventually converge)—are theoretically unjustified, given the problems of logic inherent in the perspective, the failure to explain how transitions between stages occur, and, most importantly, the universe of empirical evidence that contradicts the specific arguments being advanced. The theory of nationalism advocated in this essay, with the explanatory power it provides, differs markedly from other theories that have recently met with interest, such as those offered by Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson. The theory advanced here is logically sound and falsifiable, is based on empirical study of the societies in question, therein accounts for the phenomena being investigated, and is not based on that remnant of speculative philosophy—the deterministic, teleological view of humanity, and, therefore, of culture. The latter has provided no explanatory power to date, has no proof advocating for it (indeed, quod erat demonstrandum remains a begged question), and, thus, has no justifiable place in any science whatsoever.
As argued elsewhere in greater detail, grave problems are manifest in certain of the dominant interpretations of nationalism (Greenfeld 2005, 2006: 64–92). (For a detailed discussion of the state of the art, see Eastwood 2006: 1–22.) The main trouble with Ernest Gellner’s argument in Nations and Nationalism, an argument which continues to be popular in the social sciences, is that it omits the one element central to the empirical sciences: empirical evidence itself (and Gellner’s imaginary Ruritarians, Megalomanians, and blue people mirror known human societies very poorly, being, therefore, less-than-ideal ideal types, however understood). Gellner’s underlying argument that nationalism is a systemic requirement of the capitalist (or industrial) economy is forcefully contradicted by the empirical evidence—England, France, Germany, Japan, and America, to name a few not unimportant cases, were nationalist societies before a capitalist economy arose in those societies. In addition to the evidence calling the authority of Gellner’s work into question, other problems include the tautological nature of Gellner’sdefinitions, which, obviously, presents logical problems, and his teleological conception of human development, which remains patently unjustified (Greenfeld 2005: 101–03; Greenfeld and Eastwood 2005: 247–50).
Anderson’s argument in Imagined Communities, another work on nationalism that remains in vogue, does not differ much from Gellner’s in substance insofar as nationalism is seen as systemic and determined: It is a retelling of history from the standpoint of classical historical materialism. In it, nationalism is, expectedly, taken as being epiphenomenal. Contrary to what the title might suggest, Imagined Communities does not emphasize the role of imagination (arguably the central ingredient in culture and the primary means by which members of national communities experience their nationality); instead, it focuses on the advent of print capitalism, seen as an economic development that gave birth to new political structures as it facilitated the imagining of linguistic universes as nations. The historical process said to be captured—and, therefore, the body of empirical evidence purported to be explained—by this logic is left unaccounted for in Anderson’s work, and the logic itself is riddled with gaps (e.g. by regarding the process as fundamental, for example, the process could then be left unexplained—and it was). Anderson’s work suffers from other problems with evidence—for example, Anderson’s location of Latin America as nationalism’s birth site is not sustained in his book, but the evidence against this claim is overwhelming (Bell 1995; Colley 1992; Eastwood 2006; Greenfeld 1992)—and fails to account for why the groups that came to be known as nations imagined themselves as such and not in some other way (such as churches or classes, for instance). In his later work, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World (1998), Anderson leaves no doubt of the role that imagination plays in his conception of the world: it follows “objective” social forces—in the case of national communities the social force is “capitalism” (Anderson 1998: 62). The evidence suggests otherwise (Greenfeld 2001a).
Nationalism is and has been the most important social, political, and economic force in the last five hundred years: it is such a force because it is the order-defining culture of our time. The equation of “people” and “nation” half a millennium ago effected a revolution in consciousness, compared to which all great modern revolutions, whether political or economic, pale in significance. All modern history, from the sixteenth century until today, is the history of the gradual institutionalization of the cultural precepts of nationalism, i.e. of the implementation of this form of culture in social, economic, political, and other arrangements, and its expression in the intellectual traditions characteristic of modern society. Such representation of the cultural blueprints of nationalism proceeds in different nations at different paces, but the direction of institutional change remains the same—towards greater consistency with secularism, egalitarianism, and popular sovereignty. Nationalism is the cultural foundation of modernity: it is the framework which gives meaning to our ideals and aspirations, and, insofar as modern humanity is concerned, it is our equivalent of DNA. We are defined, constructed, and made by nationalism—it is high time we start understanding it even better.
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