Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Part I The making of the theory
- Part II The classical criticisms
- Part III Bringing politics back in
- 7 Nationalisms that bark and nationalisms that bite: Ernest Gellner and the substantiation of nations
- 8 Nationalism and modernity
- 9 Modern multinational democracies: transcending a Gellnerian oxymoron
- Part IV Wider implications
- Bibliography of Ernest Gellner's writings on nationalism
- Index
9 - Modern multinational democracies: transcending a Gellnerian oxymoron
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Part I The making of the theory
- Part II The classical criticisms
- Part III Bringing politics back in
- 7 Nationalisms that bark and nationalisms that bite: Ernest Gellner and the substantiation of nations
- 8 Nationalism and modernity
- 9 Modern multinational democracies: transcending a Gellnerian oxymoron
- Part IV Wider implications
- Bibliography of Ernest Gellner's writings on nationalism
- Index
Summary
By 1986, three years before the walls came down, two new important bodies of literature were in place that should have helped us to think carefully about the difficult relationship between democratisation and nationalism. Ernest Gellner published his magisterial Nations and Nationalism in 1983, the same year that saw the publication of another modern classic on nationalism, Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. In 1986 the four-volume work edited by Guillermo O'Donnell, Phillipe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, Transitions From Authoritarian Rule was released and immediately created the field of ‘transitology’.
What now strikes me as amazing is that these two bodies of literature, which in retrospect should have learned so much from each other, were virtually separate and non-communicating discourses. In the four volumes on democratic transitions, nationalism is never thematised as a major issue, or even given one separate chapter. Indeed, the word ‘nationalism’ only appears in the index of one of the four volumes, that on southern Europe, and the reader is only referred to one page on Spain, one page on Portugal and two pages on Greece. The name of Ernest Gellner does not appear in the index of any of the four volumes, nor does the name of Benedict Anderson. As the author of one of the comparative papers in this series, I of course must share responsibility for the oversight.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The State of the NationErnest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism, pp. 219 - 240Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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