nations and nationalism ernest gellner summary

The longing some people have for national identity precedes the industrial revolution by a long way, and there have been ethnic communities which resemble nations in previous periods: such as Jewish communities which stretch back 2000 years. His theory doesn’t explain the persistence of nationalism: national identity extends far beyond schooling and the kind of nationalisms we see in political conflicts can’t be explained by people simply having been taught in the same language at school several years or decades earlier. Gellner’s theory is a functionalist one, and it tends to understate the extent to which modern education systems create divisions and inequalities. Nations emerged with modernity and the industrial revolution in Europe. Mass education based on an official language taught in schools helped to form the basis for this sense of unity on a large scale. The modern state requires large numbers of people to interact with strangers, which in turn requires them to have some sense of connectedness to each other.

Industrialisation led to rapid economic growth based on a complex division of labour and this required a large scale rational system to organise and direct it, hence the emergence of the nation state and its bureaucratic systems. The origins of Nationalism and the feelings associated with it are thus not rooted in human nature, but in the social processes which emerged with the particular historical period of modernity. Nationalism is still an important part of identityĮrnest Gellner argued that the nations, the nation state and nationalism had their origins in modernity, more specifically in the French and industrial revolutions of the late 18th century.

Nations and nationalism ernest gellner summary