Abstract
There are two strands of argument that have been lobbied against nations and nationalism in recent decades by humanitarian aid workers, human rights activists and western liberal political theorists. The first is the moral stance that nationalism has more often than not been the excuse used to start wars and foment ethnic strife in the modern era. The second critique is that nations are not only bad in a moral sense, but also obsolete in a 21st-century globalized world, in which cosmopolitanism should be the order of the day. Set against these arguments is Craig Calhoun’s contrarian collection of essays on the continuing relevance of nations and nationalism.
Calhoun makes the oft-overlooked point that nations and nationalism have, on many an occasion, been on the side of progress, employed by populist groups pushing for modern democracy against various global inequities or imperial exploitation. He provides the corrective that ‘nationalism as a project was often aiming for economic redistribution and equity, even as the cosmopolitan project thinks of itself as doing that today’ (p. 18). Critics of nationalism also underestimate its lasting power, claims Calhoun. For those who argue that nationalism is simply a product of centralized, state-sponsored propaganda, Calhoun counters that a sense of national solidarity can still be real even when it is a construct. It is also so intertwined with other cultural traditions that it cannot be so easily disentangled and discarded from people’s sense of themselves and their place in the world. And when it comes to cosmopolitanists, Calhoun’s ongoing criticism is that they tend to dismiss the particular value of ‘culture’ (including cultures of nationalism) too easily. Culture is seen as ‘extrinsic to and not constitutive of’ (p. 152) the individual citizens of different nations. As a result, Calhoun argues, cosmopolitan theories for a new and more fair world order that focus on the ‘abstract universality of individual human persons, may provide insights [but are] fundamentally unsound as guides to the world in which human beings must take actions’ (p. 24).
To drive home this point, Calhoun emphasizes the centrality and ubiquity of the concept of the nation in the modern era. Modern-day nationalism is used by both individuals and states as a means of self-definition and as a way of constructing and categorizing in-groups and out-groups. It competes with religion for an individual’s primary allegiance, going so far as to ask its citizens to potentially give up their lives out of loyalty to the nation. At the same time, the notion has developed of the nation as a unified collective, one that gives political legitimacy to the state that defines its borders. This idea has bled into much of modern social theory and political practice. Within the political sphere, the world system of nation-states now in place has made it almost essential for a marginalized people to push for statehood in order to have their rights recognized (see Palestine in this regard).
Having convinced the reader that nations are here to stay, Calhoun proceeds to explore the relationship between nationalism and ethnicity, civil society, individual identity and democracy over the course of the subsequent chapters. Is nationalism simply the natural extension of longstanding ethnicities or something else entirely (Chapter 3)? Can nationalism thrive in an open democracy with a vibrant civil society (Chapter 4)? What are the implications of a nationalist rhetoric on cultural diversity (Chapter 5)? How can nationalism be a resource for democracy (Chapter 7)? These are the kinds of ambitious questions that Calhoun tackles in the remainder of the book.
In each chapter, Calhoun explains the ongoing debates in the various relevant fields, identifying the critical authors to read on both sides, outlining the historical progression of these debates and where things stand today, and what earlier scholars have missed. As such, Nations Matter is a useful read for the student interested in nationalism, cosmopolitanism or discursive national projects. But even among those who already enjoy familiarity with these issues and debates, Calhoun delights with his insightful critiques and lucid prose.
In discussing the relationship between nationality and ethnicity, for instance, Calhoun provides a succinct summary of the competing explanations about this chicken-and-egg relationship. Both Anthony Smith’s argument that nationalism has roots in premodern ethnicity (pp. 67–69) (the notion of the nation as ‘always already there’) and Benedict Anderson’s that the nation is more of an imagined political community (pp. 72–75) are presented and evaluated on their merits. At the same time, Calhoun turns a critical eye to the pitfalls of nationalism and national projects, particularly the pressures for conformity this places on citizens who may differ from the expected national mould in various ways (whether by their race/ethnic grouping, gender, sexuality, or political beliefs). As he puts it: ‘The categorical nature of national identities is linked strongly to ideas of purity and normalizations of the “correct” way to be a member of a nation’ (p. 71). But this darker reality regarding nationalism does not take away from its potential to serve as a unifying force that brings together diverse groups without demanding that they give up their differences. ‘It does this not simply by providing an encompassing culture but by providing an arena for public debate and culture-making’, writes Calhoun (p. 151).
In this manner, even as he criticizes the abstract idealism of liberal political theorists, Calhoun shows himself to be no stranger to idealism himself. He too is concerned with the question of how to build a better world, but he is pragmatic enough to attempt to build one that rests upon the social structure provided by the system of nation-states and nationalism as it stands today. It is for this reason that he devotes a significant portion of the book to discussing the differences between ethnic and civic nationalism. The historian Hans Kohn coined the terms ethnic and civic nationalism in 1944, associating civic nationalism with the liberal West, voluntary citizenship and collective will. Forty years later, Jürgen Habermas (1998) wrote about a similar concept and called it ‘constitutional patriotism’ where citizens actively and willingly give their loyalty to the nation on the basis of a constitution that they have democratically chosen for themselves. Ethnic nationalism, on the other hand, was viewed as a product of the East, pre-political and anti-modern in nature, steeped in the past and based on a common history and/or ancestry. While ethnic nationalism focused on the particular, civic nationalism focused on abstract ideals and could thus – it was assumed – easily transcend itself to achieve a more global, cosmopolitan identity. Kohn supported the ‘good’ civic nationalism over the ‘bad’ ethnic nationalism, but Calhoun argues that Kohn constructed too stark a contrast between these two forms of nationalism, setting up a dichotomy that too easily lines up with other gross overgeneralizations (East/West, democratic/undemocratic, modern/premodern). Most countries have elements of both ethnic and civic nationalisms to varying degrees. As Calhoun points out: ‘Even the most “civic” of nationalisms demand an account of the particularity of their relationship to the larger world’ (p. 140).
The question then becomes: how does one enhance the degree of civic nationalism in a country, but not necessarily at the expense of its ethnic nationalism? Calhoun’s answer is: through democracy. In the final chapter of the book, Calhoun reminds the reader that the relationship between nationalism and democracy is in fact a two-way street: that even while nationalism is crucial to ‘collective democratic subjectivity’, democracy ‘encourages the formation of national solidarity’ (p. 149). It is through these combined structures of democracy and national solidarity that a more inclusive and more global sense of belonging can develop. After all, at the end of the day, the problems of globalization call for ‘better states, not the end of states’ (p. 5). This is Calhoun’s closing argument and it is a compelling one, even though he fails to explain how the leap from the national to the global can happen in real terms and outside the realm of the elites of this world. For that answer, we may need to turn to Calhoun’s forthcoming book, Cosmopolitanism and Belonging.