Nationalism by Ernest Gellner Search Amazon for other books by or about Ernest Gellner. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

It is this which explains nationalism: the principle--so strange and eccentric in the age of agrarian cultural diversity and of the "ethnic" division of labour--that homogeneity of culture is the political bond, that mastery of (and, one should add, acceptability in) a given high culture (the one used by the surrounding bureaucracies) is the precondition of political, economic and social citizenship. If you satisfy this condition, you can enjoy your droit de cite. If you do not, you must accept second-class and subservient status, or you must assimilate, or migrate, or seek to change the situation through irredentist nationalist activity (pp.29-30).

Thus does Ernest Gellner, one of the principal authorities on the subject, define the dominant position of nationalism within the industrialized world. It is clear that his approach draws upon historical analysis, economic and political analysis and the study of comparative cultures and states. The degree of expertise in a variety of fields required to synthesise the various bodies of knowledge and indeed of discourse marks out a person whose opinions are worth considering, no matter whether they are considered correct or not (although the approach is subject to amendment by rigorous empirical research). Gellner's arguments are persuasive (they are also outlined at greater length elsewhere--this short book acts as a useful introduction to his thought for those who do not need additional detail). He locates nationalism within economic change and within ideologies of empowerment of one group above others, whether those ideologies sanction violence or not. He also correctly points out that the various causes of nationalism have resulted in a great deal of suffering and misery over the years with precious little, if any, positive results. Nationalism has, as is well-known, become the last refuge of the scoundrel and the sight of dubiously-intentioned individuals and their backers wrapping themselves in the flags of the world has become one of the more disappointing phenomena of the globalised media. Gellner accurately skewers the pretensions of such individuals in several ways, not least by observing that nationalists claim to love their own cultures as being manifestly superior and beautiful in their own right, although if nationalism is a general phenomenon, covering a whole variety of nations, quite obviously it cannot be explained by the reasons operating internally within each national movement (p.95) and, hence, cultures themselves become a principle of the delimitation of political units. This, therefore, inevitably results in divisiveness and conflict along lines which are never any better than contentious (who is to say which people are "proper" representatives of a particular culture, presumably one which does not change or which does not vary). There seems to be little likelihood that conflict drawn upon such lines will have any positive outcome.

Although this is a short book, at just over 100 pages, it covers a great deal of intellectual material and is a provocative and penetrating explanation of a topic that is of considerable importance in the modern world. It will be of considerable interest to anyone wishing to make sense of the different ways in which the concept of nationalism has manifested itself and of the implications of those manifestations. If there is a weakness, it is that alternative conclusions might have been drawn from a similar body of knowledge and data--but doing so would rely upon use of other ideological constructs and readers working out what these might be would in any case be improving their understanding of themselves and the world.