Smith - Nationalism: theory, ideology, history

Key Concepts series

Barbara Adam, Time

Alan Aldridge, Consumption

Alan Aldridge, The Market

Jakob Arnoldi, Risk

Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer, Disability

Darin Barney, The Network Society

Mildred Blaxter, Health 2nd edition

Harriet Bradley, Gender

Harry Brighouse, Justice

Mnica Brito Vieira and David Runciman, Representation

Steve Bruce, Fundamentalism 2nd edition

Margaret Canovan, The People

Alejandro Cols, Empire

Anthony Elliott, Concepts of the Self 2nd edition

Steve Fenton, Ethnicity 2nd edition

Katrin Flikschuh, Freedom

Michael Freeman, Human Rights

Russell Hardin, Trust

Geoffrey Ingham, Capitalism

Fred Inglis, Culture

Robert H. Jackson, Sovereignty

Jennifer Jackson Preece, Minority Rights

Gill Jones, Youth

Paul Kelly, Liberalism

Anne Mette Kjr, Governance

Ruth Lister, Poverty

Jon Mandle, Global Justice

Anthony Payne and Nicola Phillips, Development

Judith Phillips, Care

Michael Saward, Democracy

John Scott, Power

Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism 2nd edition

Stuart White, Equality

Preface

This book aims to provide a short introduction to the concept of nationalism. Its purpose is to offer students and readers a critical synthesis of much of the existing scholarship in the field, focusing on the main theoretical contributions rather than the huge corpus of empirical studies. My chief objective is to examine the various theoretical, ideological and historical facets of the concept of nationalism, and the central paradigms of explanation in the field. Inevitably, this has meant shifting the focus of attention in the later chapters from nationalism, understood as an ideology, movement and symbolic language, to the object of its concerns, the nation, understood both as a contested concept and as a form of community and institutional behaviour. In practice, the two concepts are closely related, but I believe it is important not to conflate them, especially as it is possible to discern different forms of the category of the nation prior to the appearance of the ideology of nationalism, and outside the area of the latters provenance.

In a short book of this kind, I make no claims to comprehensive treatment. Inevitably, certain areas have been neglected or omitted. For the debates on such topics as liberalism and nationalism, or gender and nation, the reader is asked to consult the already large literatures in these subfields, as well as my general discussions in Nationalism and Modernism . Similarly, while the overall organization and tone of the book reflects my own views as an active participant in the debates on nations and nationalism, my primary concern with tracing the lines of these debates, especially in chapter 4, has meant that less space was available for developing my own views on the subject. Nevertheless, I have tried to sketch, in chapter 5, an alternative history of the nation. I hope also to have been able to convey something of the passion and complexity of the debates in the field over the last half century, while providing a clear framework for grasping the different contributions to the study of nationalism.

I should like to express my thanks to John Thompson and Polity for asking me to contribute to their series on Key Concepts in the social sciences, and to Seeta Persaud for her help in preparing the typescript. For any errors and omissions, however, as well as for the views expressed, the responsibility is entirely mine.

Anthony D. Smith

London School of Economics

The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt,

Thou settest every man in his place

Thou suppliest their necessities:

Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.

Their tongues are separate in speech,

And their natures as well;

Their skins are distinguished,

As thou distinguishest the foreign peoples.

All foreign distant countries, thou makest their life (also)

For thou hast set a Nile in heaven,

The Nile in heaven, it is for the foreign peoples

(From The Hymn to the Aton )