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Course of Study:
(ASC233) International Migration and Multicultural Societies

Title of work:
Globalization and the nation-state (1998)

Section:
Nationalism and ethnicity: obsolete relics, antiglobal trends or key components
of the global field? pp. 135--160

Author/editor of work:
Holton, R. J.

Author of section:
Holton, R.J.

Name of Publisher:
Macmillan Press
6

Nationalism and Ethnicity:

Obsolete Relics, Antiglobal
Trends or Key Components
of the Global Field?

The dynamics of the late 20th century world have confounded social
scientists and political actors alike. Conventional certainties and widely
held predictions about the future have been undermined as social
change takes on new characteristics or seems to return to features of an
older world thought to be obsolete and outmoded. Among the prime
examples of this process are the revival of nationalism and the robust
persistence of ethnicity.
At first sight, these two often interrelated trends seem to run counter
to processes of globalization inasmuch as they emphasize the necessity
and desirability of boundaries between groups rather than a single
borderless world. Their continuing presence seems to contradict claims
that globalization is an unstoppable process dominating nations and
eroding local allegiances. Many commentators assun1e that the contem­
porary eruption of apparently primordial loyalties and hatreds repre­
sents a major limit to the process and scope of globalization. Many also
see the revival of nationalism and ethnicity, in part at least, as resis­
tance to a global world where boundaries are permeable and all is in
flux. National identity, especially where it is overlaid with a sense of
ethnic solidarity, offers some kind of stable anchor for identity and
political security in an age where impersonal global capital predom­
inates. It is thus well worth considering whether political and cultural
processes and institutions are less easily globalized than economic
ones, and if so, why this should be.

135
136 Globalization and the Nation-State

Nationalism and the nation-state

Contemporary nationalism, in one shape or form, is evident on almost

every continent, defying the projections of both Marxism and modern­
ization theory. Whether in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia,
Africa, or Latin America, the appeal to nation as a source of cultural
identity and political security has, on most occasions, proved more
powerful than the claims of social class. In addition, nationalism, in
certain of its manifestations, also threatens the liberal-democratic
model of a secular society of free-standing individuals able to secure
th�ir interests through the market and citizenship rights. In particular,
the association between nationalism and racism or extremist forms of
ethnicity, reflected in the 20th-century tragedies of genocide and what
has recently been called 'ethnic cleansing', has shaken the compla­
cency of Western commentators who thought that the end of the Cold
War automatically meant the triumph of liberal-democratic politics.
The wide range of contexts in which nationalism has arisen and the
different forms it has taken are evident from even a cursory inspection
of the history of the past 250 years and academic commentaries on the
topic. Nationalism has been conceived, for example, as political or
cultural, unificatory or fragmentating, ethnocentric or polycentric, and
progressive or reactionary. Leaving these binary conceptual distinctions
aside for the moment, it is instructive to note the distinction between
three contemporary types. The first involves the association of nation­
alism with democratic struggles against autocracy and monarchical
dynasticism, often with a strong internationalist tone, as in the Amer­
ican and French Revolutions of the late 18th century. The second is
connected with anticolonial struggles against European powers by
political movements in Africa and Asia, seeking to project a sense of
the national community beyond tribalism. Post-colonial nationalism
has sometimes projected wider transnational aspirations, as in Pan­
Arabism and Pan-Africanism. The third comprisy-i antiliberal and
chauvinistic forms of nationalism. In this, natiqnalism is linked not
with claims about the common aspirations of some wider entity, such
as humanity or the African peoples, but with the exclusive and often
racist claims of a particular people, defined as culturally distinct from
and often superior to others. It is this version of nationalism that may in
extreme forms be used to license genocide and 'ethnic cleansing'.
Well-known examples include the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews and
the more recent interethnic conflicts in the Balkans involving Serbs,
Croats, and Bosnian Muslims.
Nationalism and Ethnicity 137

Each of these examples has a complex history of its own, and the
place of nationalism and ethnicity in each also varies. Yet the under­
lying logic to all such cases is that identity, political loyalty, and polit­
ical action are based on membership of a national community. Where
differences arise is, first, in how a nation is conceived, and second, in
how a nation is seen to articulate with both transnational and sub­
national social groups.
As indicated in earlier chapters, the institution of the nation-state
represents an amalgam of two entities: the state as a set of political
institutions, and the nation, conceived of as the political and cultural
community ·of a people. These distinct entities have often been
confused and conflated, leading to notorious difficulties in defining
exactly what a nation actually is. Walker Connor regards the shorthand
use of the term nation to refer to either or both of the following:

• a sense of peoplehood
• a political institution.

This has contributed to a 'terminological chaos' in discourses on nation

and nationalism (Connor 1987). One example of this is the failure to
distinguish between nationalism as loyalty to the state and nationalism
as loyalty to a nation or people.
Failure to distinguish the two for purposes of analysis has created
several problems. One is that many people are able to identify with tp.e
nation as a cultural and historical identity without necessarily identi­
fying with the current political institutions embodied in the national
state. One could be a staunch Greek nationalist under the dictatorship
of the colonels without supporting the Greek state of that era, just as
liberal-democratic German nationalists under the Kaiser could support
and identify with the nation while criticizing the monarchist form of
state. A second problem is that states can be established without neces­
sarily being attached to strong bodies of nationalist feeling. This often
occurred in the post-war process of decolonization, when the same
arbitrary borders that colonial powers imposed on the territories they
annexed were subsequently used as the boundaries for new post­
. colonial states even though they typically encompassed a range of
tribal and ethnic groups. In Europe, too, it is clear that nations such as
the UK are not composed of a single people or ethnicity. The UK
contains the Scots, Welsh, and Irish as well as the English, while Spain
contains Basques and Catalans. f'.or Connor, only a minority of nation-
138 Globalization and the Nation-State

states, such as Iceland, Japan, or Norway, are sufficiently homogeneous

to be described as nation-states.
Connor uses evidence of this kind to dispute as facile the conven­
tional proposition that the world is composed of nation-states. The
world may well be divided into states based upon claims of exclusive
juridical sovereignty within a given territory. However, such entities are
more typically multi-ethnic or multinational, in the sense of being
composed of a range of peoples. The typology of relations between
states and peoples given in Tab]e 6.1 is therefore proposed. Here, states
vary according to the number of peoples within them, the number of
peoples whose homeland is within some pai1 of the state, and the partic­
ular impact of immigration on patten1s of state-building. Mestizo states,
for example, are a category limited to Latin America based on a popula­
tion of those with joint European-Amerindian ancestry, contrasted with
multihomeland multinational states, such as Nigeria and the former
Soviet Union, containing the homelands of many peoples.

Table 6.1 A typology of relations between state and nation

Type Characteristic Examples
Nation-states Extremely homogeneous Iceland, Japan

Multination-states Ethnic diversity

1. Unihomeland Ethnic mix due to immigration, Srilankan Sinhalese

but claimed as home by only Malaysian Malays
one group

2. Multihomeland Ethnic mix, but claimed as Former Soviet Union

home by more than one group Nigeria

3. Non-homeland Ethnic mix due to immigration, Caribb_ean states such

but no group sees the territory as G1,1yana or Trinidad­
as the homeland Tobigo

Immigrant states Integration of ethnic mix USA

into a single nation, without
that being a historic homeland

Mestizo states European-Amerindian mix Latin America

Source: Adapted from Connor (1994, p. 77-84).

Nationalism and Ethnicity 139

Another set of definitional and conceptual problems stems from the

emotionality and normativity of terms such as 'national' and 'nation­
alism'. This normativity is reflected in Ernest Gellner's minimal defin­
ition of nationalism as a 'principle which holds that the political and
national unit should be congruent' (1983, p. 1) (emphasis added). The
proposition that polity and nation should coincide is deep-seated but
also profoundly contested. For some, nation is a sublime and sacred
entity; for others, it is one fundamental root cause of violence,
suffering, and illusion. We are dealing here not simply with ostensibly
neutral social science concepts, but with matters that are charged with
high levels of emotional force and embedded in often deeply held
values. Nations in this sense typically have moral and aesthetic person­
alities, both to adherents who identify nations with positive values and
all that is beautiful, and to opponents who associate nationalism with
all that is bad, evil, irrational, and ugly.
These simple dichotomies born of political commitment and intense
social psychological engagement do, however, skew the analysis of
nationalism to only some of its more powerful exemplifications.
Michael Billig (1995) has recently issued a cautionary warning against
stereotyping nationalism as extremism, gripped by intense emotion,
and embroiled in violent pathological modes of political action. To
think solely in these terms, he claims, is to neglect more mundane or
banal forms of nationalism, embedded in the everyday life of nations
that are more politically settled and peaceful, such as the USA or many
parts of Western Europe. The national flags that hang almost unnoticed
on public buildings symbolize this latter form of nationalism and stand
in contrast to 'bot' activist forms of nationalism, in which flags are
waved in the course of conflict and political 1nobilization. While the
Irish tricolour is waved as a gesture of nationalist defiance of British
sovereignty by many Catholics in Northern Ireland, the same flag
hangs on public buildings in the Irish Republic as a more mundane
symbol of nationhood, along with national symbols on bank notes,
currency, and advertising logos. Each is a variant of nationalism, but
the latter forms tend to be neglected by predominantly liberal theorists
of nationalism who see in it only irrational pathology and atavistic
social. aspirations.
Notwithstanding this array of difficulties, analysts of nationalism
have taken a range of positions on the relationship between the two
parts of the amalgam of nation-state.
140 Globalization and the Nation-State

Theories of nationalism and the nation--state

John Hutchinson (1994) has distinguished between primordialist,

modernist, and ethnicist interpretations of nationalism. The primordial
position argues that nations represent ancient 'natural' loyalties that
originated in the mists of time but which have nonetheless driven the
recent historical emergence of the nation-state. Herder, the 18th­
century German theorist of nationhood, and Bagehot, the 19th-century
English political commentator, both, in their different ways, saw the
nation-state arising from the aspirations of a people ( or Volk),
implying that peoples create and have a right to create political institu­
tions. Nations come first, states come next, albeit in organic union
with each other.
The attractiveness of this argument is that the appeal to historical
roots is exactly how nationalist movements understand and present
themselves to the world. Hence the trappings of tradition and inherited
myths that attach to such movements. The problem with this view is
that national consciousness appears to be a comparatively recent
phenomenon, one which in many, although not all, respects post-dates
the formation of nation-states. Both Mann (1986) writing of England
and Braudel (1988) of France make the point that in late medieval and
early modern times, most inhabitants of these two countries did not
conceive of themselves as English or French, nor did they speak a stan­
dard language. Until the French Revolution of 1789, there was no
national French flag, while the language of the Declaration of the
Rights of Man was spoken by only a minority of the population (Billig
1995, p. 25).
The further back in history one goes, the greater the degree of
mixture and complexity that arises in the background constituents of
groups that may today regard themselves as a people with a continuous
historical integrity. This is reflected in an ironic rem:ark attributed to
Israel Zangwill that if we 'turn time's cinema{ograph back far
enough... the Germans are found to be French and the French
Germans'. By this, he means that the French nation was constructed on
lands settled by the Germanic Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, and
Normans, while modem Germany comprises lands in which Celts as
well as Germanic tribes settled. Even in the mid- to late 19th century,
there is evidence to suggest that many Europeans, especially those from
rural and less educated backgrounds, identified primarily with local or
regional entities rather than with the nation (Weber 1976). Most late
19th-century migrants to the USA identified themselves in the official
Nationalism and Ethnicity 141

migration documents, 'as Neapolitan, Calabrian and the like, but not
Italian... Gorali, Kashubi, Silesian and so on, but not Polish ... ' (Them­
strom 1980, cited in Connor 1994, p. 221).
Such criticisms have given credibility to an alternative approach to
the analysis of nations and nationalism that may be termed modernist.
For analysts such as Gellner and Hobsbawm, nationalism is a modern
phenomenon linked with processes such as the rise of the nation-state,
industrialization, and the development of modern capitalism. In spite of
its apparent appeal to the past, nationalism is seen as an invented tradi­
tion, fostered more by intellectuals and manipulated by political elites
and special interest groups. These are the key mechanisms behind
groundswells of spontaneous popular enthusiasm rather than the
reawakening of ancient traditions. Hobsbawm (1990) cites the
following instructive comment by the 19th-century Italian nationalist
Massimo d' Azeglio on the achievement of Italian unification: 'We have
made Italy, now we have to make Italians' (1990, p. 44). The implica­
tion is that national feeling has now to be created by those political
actors and nationalist intellectuals who had driven forward the unifica­
tion process to military and realpolitik success. What pre-existed this
process, as far as the populace was concerned, was regional and/or
local affiliation embedded in regional languages and dialects.
Gellner (1983), in a much quoted discussion, sees nationalism
emerging when the institution of the state has already emerged in
stable form. Its emergence is connected with the transition from what
he calls agroliterate to industrial societies. In the former, there was no
tendency to connect political power with cultural boundaries. For
Gellner, privileged elites typically accentuated their distinction from
the remainder of society without recourse to cultural imperialism or
the cultural homogeneity of the political unit. There was no need for
such congruence where hierarchy prevailed, and most of the popula­
tion was 'laterally insulated' from each other in agricultural communi­
ties (1983, p. 9).
Industrial societies, in contrast, depend on much higher levels of
standardization in technological competence and communication. One
response to this is the drive to create a standardized national language.
At the same time, the commitment of industrial societies to perpetual
growth within a specialized division of labour requires high levels of
literacy, which can only be delivered by centralized systems of educa­
tion. Socialization takes place outside local intimate social relations.
This creates problems in finding some new principle of social integra­
tion that can tie together the new industrial state with the cultural order
142 Globalization and the Nation-State

in a way that is suitably standardized. For Gellner, nationalism is such

a principle. Thus it is not to be seen primordially as 'the awakening of
an old, latent, dormant force, though that is how it does indeed present
itself. [Rather] it is... the consequence of a new form of social organi­
zation, based on deeply internalized, education-dependent high
cultures ... (1983, p. 48). In the longer term, however, once industrial­
ization is achieved, the intensity of nationalism declines.
One potential problem with Gellner's approach is that his model
works better for Western than for Eastern Europe or the post-colonial
states. Here, as Hutchinson (1994, p. 21) points out, nationalism
predates industrialization. Gellner had himself considered this kind of
objection in attempting a typology of nationalisms (1983, pp. 88-109).
This investigated the effect of variations in the structure of power,
access to education and literacy, and levels of cultural unity on varieties
of nationalist experience. One distinction drawn was between the
conditions under which nationalism emerged in Western and Eastern
Europe. In the latter, where industrialism.was less well developed and
access to high culture limited, as in the Hapsburg lands of Central and
Eastern Europe, nationalism tended towards ethnically driven fragmen­
tation and Balkanization. In the West, in contrast, where industrializa­
tion developed more rapidly and literacy was more advanced,
unificatory forms of liberal nationalism were more evident.
Whether this analysis of diverse forms of nationalism leaves
Gellner's general theory intact is, however, debatable. This is partly
because he has to dilute the bold proposition that the state precedes
nationalism in order to deal with cases where the reverse is true.
However, it is also because of underlying difficulties in holding to an
entirely endogenous approach to nationalism, in which the conditions
for its emergence in any particular location are related solely to the
modernizing characteristics of the territory within which it emerges.
Gellner recognizes that a broader cross-national focus is required in
certain residual cases, as in the diasporic nationalism'.' of groups such as
Zionist Jews, but fails to develop the point very far to look at nation­
alism as a paradoxic_al force that both moves across borders to animate
new groups while also creating or reinforcing other boundaries.
Gellner's argument is only one a number of versions of modernism,
another being Eric Hobsbawm 's emphasis on the nation-state as the
most suitable political framework for the development and reproduc­
tion of modem capitalism rather than industrialization per se. Hobs­
bawm is also critical of Gellner's excessively top-down approach to
nationalism, preferring to see it as a 'dual phenomenon', that is, the
Nationalism and Ethnicity 143

product of both popular aspirations 'from below' as well as capitalist

development and state-building 'from above' (Hobsbawm 1990, p. 10).
Such developments do not, however, return us to an emphasis on the
primordial as found in Herder or in the propaganda of many nationalist
movements. For modernists, they lead us rather into issues to do with
the invention of tradition and the recasting of older traditions into
nationalist form.
The idea of the invention of tradition, historically elaborated in Hobs­
bawm and Ranger (1983), proposes that the seeming age-old myths and
rituals of nationhood are comparatively recent inventions rather than
primordial sentiments existing in some kind of unbroken line of succes­
sion from the dim and distant past. Hobsbawm, for example, in his own
work notes that institutions such as national anthems, national flags,
and the personification of nations in symbols such as Marianne (France)
or the Yankee Uncle Sam were invented as 'entirely new symbols and
devices' in the period since the 1740s ( 1990, p. 7).
Some traditions, of course, depend on older materials, although even
here the extent of accretion and discontinuity is significant. In Britain,
for example, myths of King Alfred or King Arthur and the Knights of the
Round Table, as episodes in the history of the English or British race,
represent retrospective reconstructions of a speculative history that is
very much mythical. Whether or not such figures existed - the evidence
for figures such as Arthur being very slender (Williams 1994) - and
whether they perceived themselves as English or British is beside the
point. What is more salient is the way in which mythical stories about
their deeds and exploits have been reinvented and recast, to be later
woven into a broader story seeking to establish the ancient character of
nationhood and its intimate connection with institutions such as
monarchy and Christendom, or values such as courage and honour. In
the case of the myths of Arthur and knights such as Lancelot, these have
been appropriated by late medieval Cistercian monks as spiritual figures,
by the English Tudor kings to assist in legitimizing a secular claim to the
throne, and by 19th-century poets such as Tennyson to celebrate a more
recognizably British nationalist past (Williams 1994). Aspects of 19th­
century stories such as the Holy Grail, the Round Table or the magician
Merlin are not there, so to speak, in the earliest original, but over time
become accretions tying in with aspect of the reinvented story that suit a
succession of religious, secular, and nationalist purposes.
Nations, as Benedict Anderson (1983) has pointed out, function as
'imagined communities'. By this, he means that those who identify
with a particular nation will never meet in a face-to-face way with all
144 Globalization and the Nation-State

those others who are attached to the nation. Rather, they rely on images
of the nation as a people, such that 'in the minds of each lives the
image of their communion' (p. 6). For Anderson, this process of imag­
ining was historically dependent on the invention of mechanical
printing and the mass production of the printed word in vernacular
rather than arcane priestly languages (for example, Latin). This renders
nationalism a relatively modern development of the past 350 years. The
common features of the imagined nation are its bounded nature, its
sovereign freedom within a bounded territory, and finally its constitu­
tion as a community, regardless of other 1narks of difference, such as
wealth or status, that may differentiate its members. Unlike Gellner,
Anderson sees nationalism as a rather more gradual product of social
change. His analysis is also Jess trapped within a primarily endogenous
framework in which nationalism emerges primarily within a distinct
territory, having characteristics determined by factors such as the polit­
ical structure and cultural make-up of the territory concerned. Instead,
Anderson is more open to the influence of cross-border flows of nation­
alist feeling and political mobilization, as in his development of the
idea of 'long-distance nationalism' to refer to the operation of diasporic
nationalist sentiments under increasing conditions of global mobility of
people, technology, and cultural representations.
This move beyond an endogenous framework has been taken furthest
in Robertson's concept of the global field. This draws our attention to
the process whereby, once some peoples have achieved the status of
nation-state, combining political institutions with a sense of national
community, all those who see themselves as peoples have sought out
the status of a nation-state. In this way, national minorities within the
former Spanish, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, French, or British
Empires have sought national self-deterrnination, with many cross­
currents and linkages between them. Nationalism and a sense of
peoplehood, in cases such as the peoples of 19th-cent11ry Latin America
or 20th-century Africa and Indo-China, have b9th predated state
formation and drawn on wider transnational currents of thought and
mobilization. In the immediate post-war period, for example, the
contact of West African troops serving in Asia as part of the Allied war
effort assisted in transmitting the momentum and confidence of Indian
nationalism to parts of the British Empire in Africa, notably the former
Gold Coast, now Ghana. We shall return to the paradoxical connections
between nationalism and globalization later in this chapter.
Modernist accounts of nationalism have provided a valuable and
convincing critique of primordial theories. They have also offered
Nationalism and Ethnicity 145

considerable insights into certain connections between aspects ·of

modernization, such as capitalist development or printing and literacy,
and nationalism. They are nonetheless vulnerable to the criticism that
they go too far in emphasizing discontinuity with the past and the novel
character of nationalist feeling. This line of critique has been advanced
by so-called ethnicist theorists of nationalism, foremost of whom is
Anthony Smith (1971, 1986, 1990).
One of the most striking difficulties with the modernist position is to
explain why individuals and social groups should still adhere to
national feeling and national symbols in a modern, secular, and global
world. How is it that individualism and self-interest, qualities associ­
ated with capitalism and liberalisn1, do not carry all before them? It is
one thing to argue that capitalist institutions such as multinational
companies need states to perfom1 certain support functions but quite
another to explain why states also become attached to a sense of nation­
hood based on political community. Even if it is argued that nation­
alism is fostered and manipulated from above by politicians,
intellectuals, and the media, it still remains unclear why this particular
form of loyalty and identity should be chosen as a basis for adherence.
Why not adherence to something smaller, like a city, region, or
industry, or something larger, like the world as a whole? If capitalism
operates increasingly through global investment, production, and
m.arketing strategies, why not organize ideological adherence to a
global pattern?
In answering these questions, it is instructive to review the modernist
argument that nationalist traditions are invented. This may well be true
in a number of senses, especially inasmuch as there are few if any
primordial loyalties that can be traced in any kind of unbroken lineage
from the distant past to the present. To say this is not, however, to say
that there are no long-run continuities between older forms of cultural
allegiance and identity, and contemporary forms of nationalism.
Ethnicity, considered as allegiance to ascriptive ties of history and
place, may be one such linkage that spans either side of the supposedly
'Great Transformation' dividing the modem from the premodem. To
think in this way is to dispute the proposition that processes like the
Industrial Revolution or the French Revolution transformed the
premodem world in some fundamental way that obliterated all previous
allegiances and identities.
If the origins and development of nationalism predate the 18th
century, how far back in history should analysis go? While modernists
such as Benedict Anderson (1983) emohasize 16th- and 17th-century
146 Globalization and the Nation-State

developments like innovation in printing and mass publication, there is a

strong case for going much further back into the ancient world. Anthony
Smith has argued that nationalism emerges where social groups face
profound threats, be these from warfare or some other social and spiri­
tual crisis. Warfare has been an endemic aspect of world history that
clearly predates the modem world. The crises created by warfare and
other threatening processes do not in and of themselves create nation­
alism or ethnic allegiance. However, the search for a common cultural
base around which to mobilize in cases of threatened invasion or colo­
nization encourages the formation of stronger ascriptive loyalties of
place and kinship. These may cohere around a range of broad loyalties,
including religion, as well as ethnicity and nationhood. Smith (1971,
pp. 153--4) cites the example of the revolt of the Zealots against ancient
Roman rule between AD 66 and AD 73 , in the name of both God and the
Jewish people. Hutchinson (1994, p. 24) cites the example of the Arme­
nians and Georgians living on shifting borders between warring Chris­
tian and Islamic states, who have retained a strong loyalty combining
ethnic and religious components well into the modem period.
These examples indicate a sense of peoplehood way back in history,
embedded for the most part in religjon and ethnic identity. Such cases
are deployed by Smith to support the argument that nationalism may
have a long history connected with religious tradition and ascriptive ties
of ethnicity. It is not, in this sense, a modem invention. Culture in the
modem period has not then been a tabula rasa on which any kind of
content may be inscribed. While many changes are evident in forms of
nationalism between the ancient and modem worlds, and while much
may be put down to modem cultural invention, this does not entirely
dispose of continuity. The underlying point is that the nation has
emerged, sometimes over a very long time period, out of ethnocultural
feelings and sentiments that becoine en1bodied in 1nyths about origins
and in senses of a common heritage. These components of ethnocultural
9t
community, for example in the traditions of Jewish Armenian people,
persist over longer time frames than modernists suppose.
This persistence may, according to Smith, be embodied in a range of
aesthetic and religious cultural forms as well as military and administra­
tive practices. Religion is especially important as a bearer of group iden­
tity, insofar as the feelings and practices of a people are expressed and
codified in forms of writing such as holy books (Smith 1986). Modem
creators of the nation may seek to reinterpret or invent new senses of
nation, but they do so in a context of popular attitudes and traditions that
set limits to top-down manipulation by intellectuals and elites.
Nationalism and Ethnicity 147

A case in point is the constraint exercized by existing Muslim tradi­

tions on the Indian subcontinent on modernizing nationalists attempting
to establish a new secular nation-state in the 1930s and 40s. Here the
Muslim separatism that led to the establishment of Pakistan was not
simply a product of Muslim elite fears that they would be swamped by
Hindus in post-independence India. It depended also on a persistent
popular cultural tradition on the importance of living in an Islamic
society under Islamic religious law (Robinson 1979).
Modern nations, the argument continues, are often built upon
premodern ethnic cores, 'whose myths and memories, values and
symbols shaped the culture and boundaries of the nation that modern
elites managed to forge (Smith 1990, p. 180). This has, however, been
obscured by the highly modernist bias built into definitions of nation­
alism. For many modernists, these centre on the particular forms of the
American or French Revolutions that are then generalized into an ideal
type. This bases conceptions of nation and nationalism on liberal­
democratic ideals of equal citizenship rights within the political
community. Smith calls this 'polycentric nationalism', in that it 'resem­
bles the dialogue of many actors on a common stage' (1971, p. 158).
The cost of defining nation and nationalism in this way is that conti­
nuities with other ways of conceiving of the political community of a
people are thereby ruled out. The cases from the ancient world,
reviewed above, are regarded by Smith as an alternative type of ethno­
centric nationalism. The commonalities here are not simply that each
refers to the unifying principles that define a people but that the ethno­
centric type was the historical forerunner of the polycentric type.
It may be observed in passing that this kind of historical sequence
helps to explain why it is that ethnic elements of social solidarity may
be found even within the political organization of societies committed
to civil or liberal universalism as a principle that stands above particu­
laristic associations. As Alexander (1988) points out, the extent of civil
integration within any given society is typically limited by the ethnic
historical core from which the nation was constructed. Hence the dom­
inance of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) core within the
USA and, notwithstanding certain connections between Protestantism
and liberalism, the practice of the exclusion of non-WASPs, whether
Blacks or non- European migrants, at various points in recent history.
How then to respond to debates about nationalism? The foregoing
discussion suggests that a synthetic approach, combining aspects of the
modernist and ethnicist arguments, is more powerful than either
approach taken alone. Some compromise between the two is necessary,
148 Globalization and the Nation-State

in part because no general theory of nationalism is adequate. While

there are cases of inheritance of tradition (for example, the Jewish
nation), there are equally cases of invention in which, as Hutchinson
puts it, 'would-be nationalists have to concoct a common past out of
fragmentary memories or conflictual traditions' (1994, p. 34). French
nationalism appears to be a case of the latter process.
Synthesis between modernist and ethnicist accounts thus recognizes
continuities as well as contrasts in popular allegiance and cultural iden­
tity between the modern and the premodern. It also recognizes that
ethnicity has played an important part in the identity of peoples, both
historically and in the contemporary world. This emphasis on ethnicity
is evident, albeit in different ways, in Smith's approach to ethnohistory,
in Hutchinson's work on cultural nationalism, and in Connor's studies
of ethnonationalism. Ethnicity is, in this sense, very far from being an
obsolete relic. Yet what is it that makes the connection between
ethnicity and nation so powerful and enduring?

Ethnicity and nationhood

We return now to the question of why it is that nationhood and nation­

alism have been the form that much political allegiance and identity
have taken in the making of the modem world. The answer is complex,
relating both to the functions of nationalism as a form of cultural and
political mobilization of a people against some kind of (usually)
external threat, and to the attractions of the nation as a cultural symbol
rooted in a sense of distinctiveness and boundedness. Ethnicity is one
important way in which distinctiveness is conceived and boundedness
is established.
As with other key terms, no com1nonly shared definition of ethnicity
exists. One reason for this is that ethnicity is both a form of self­
ascription, that is, a way in which people describe tQ6mselves and their
identity, and a form of classification, by which groups are classified
and constructed by others. In any particular case, the two may not
coincide. Observers and classifiers, for example, may describe sets of
people by ethnic labels or identify behaviour as being motivated by
ethnicity when those concerned do not recognize or accept such forms
of classification. Banton (1994), building on this point, argues that it is
especially difficult for observers to distinguish between behaviour that
is based on nationality and that based on ethnicity. Actors' definitions
of the situation are therefore a necessary component of any analysis of
Nationalism and Ethnicity 149

the perceived operation of ethnicity. Such accounts do not, however,

make sense by themselves, but also require attention to the economic
and political context in which social action takes place.
One way of tackling some of the problems of distinguishing
ethnicity from nationality is by distinguishing between two contexts in
which ethnicity operates� The first is, so to speak, endogenous, that is,
where appeals to ethnicity rest on historical claims by a people over a
territory on the basis of historical and cultural descent. This is typically
connected with ethnonationalism, in which conceptions of nationhood
and membership of the political community are co-terminous with
membership of a bounded ethnic group. Exainples include the seces­
sionist forms of nationalism that have challenged n1ulti-ethnic empires,
such as the now defunct USSR or the former Yugoslavia, or challenges
by Scots or Bretons within more stable political units such as- the
British or French nation-states. In such cases, the appeal to ethnic iden­
tity rests largely on historical connection with a particular territory
with which a cultural group claims a more or less continuous attach­
ment over a significant period of time, often as a cultural minority
within a larger political entity.
However, the appeal to ethnic identity also arises in a second
context, namely as an immediate consequence of cross-border and
global migration, where countries of settlement, such as the USA or
Canada, become more multi-ethnic as a result of the mixing of popula­
tions. International migration, as indicated in Chapter 3, has been and
continues to be a major component of globalization, virtually all
nations and regions being involved in complex webs and long- as well
as short-distance migration. Migrant ethnicity, as distinct from ethno­
nationalism, typically occurs outside the national homeland, as for
example among Inda-Chinese in Australia or West Indians in Canada.
If we accept for the moment the contrasts between these situations, it
would seem that ethnicity plays a somewhat different role in each. In
the former, it is connected with national self-determination and nation­
building, reflecting the claim that each people has a right to a national
home or nation-state. In the latter, ethnicity may function both as
source of cultural integrity and identity for minorities in a new and
often hostile environment, and as the basis for expanded citizenship
rights (Soysal 1994) within a multicultural political framework. This
may be true, but it may still be insufficient as an answer to the question
'Why ethnicity as opposed to some other cultural identification?'
Another way of approaching the attraction of ethnicity as a cultural
principle is clearer to see if the initial distinction between ethnonation-
150 Globalization and the Nation-State

alism and migrant ethnicity is relaxed. The case for doing this derives
in part from the ubiquity of migration across boundaries within history
(McNeill 1986) and the consequent typicality of multi-ethnic culture
contact and settlement patterns throughout history. Human history over
the very long term has seen massive population movements. Virtually
all those who consider themselves settled in a particular place, even to
the point of asserting aboriginal primacy, generally migrated, be it
several centuries or several millennia ago, from s0111ewhere else. While
this sometimes meant occupancy of previous]y unpopulated land, it
increasingly meant cultural contact, conflict, sometimes genocide or
expulsion, but also often fusion with other groups, which were them­
selves often to split again, sometime later to compete as rival ethnici­
ties. The peoples that recently fought each other in the Balkans over
issues of ethnic purity and national self-determination once came from
the same cultural stock.
In all these contexts, ethnicity, defined in Smith's terms, as an ethnie,
or people with a bounded sense of identity and history, has functioned
as a way of differentiating social groups from others who are felt to
threaten or oppress them. This applies both to settled occupiers of land
threatened from invaders and competitors from outside, and to migrants
threatened by majorities from within. The social psychology of threat,
including death in battle, rape, enslavement, and forcible removal from
a territory, unemployment and poverty as the result of economic
competition, or migrant assimilation to the cultural mainstream, gener­
ates an intense search for new meanings and new anchors for culture
and personality.
Ethnicity offers higher levels of security against threat than do many
others sources of identity and allegiance, because it offers members of
a group symbolic as well as material forms of gratification and security.
Such symbolic qualities include the security of a place in history and a
sense of descent through history, as well as ernotionally charged
symbols of contemporary identity that typically appeal both to values
of courage and vitality in opposition to enemies� and to the mythical
stability of a natural order free from conflict and uncertainty. This order
is often overlaid with religious associations, which not only reinforce
ethnic group membership, but also add an appeal to transcendent
religious principles to the other symbolic gratifications of ethnicity.
Sexual representations of ethnic and ethnonational sentiment, as Masse
(1985) has noted in the case of nationalism, also play a key role here,
both as metaphors for the courage and fertility of the cultural stock, and
in terms of the capacity of groups to reproduce themselves over time.
Nationalism and Ethnicity 151

Alternative affiliations find it hard to compete. In the case of class,

for example, it is arguable that the promise of material security has
rarely been enough to undercut the wider appeal of ethnicity and
ethnonationalism, especially in a crisis. The failure of proletarian inter­
nationalism to prevent the First World War is a striking if tragic case in
point. Peasant-based movements against imperial domination in recent
Asian history were generally only successful where economic griev­
ance was allied with national sentiment (Johnson 1962). Adherence to
the city-state, an older model derived from the Hellenic past and rein­
vented in Renaissance Italy, has in contrast been unable to match the
material security promised by the nation-state, on the basis of a larger
home markets and modern develop1nents in military technology
rendering cities too small and vulnerable to be competitive.
In this general model, which draws in large n1easure on Smith,
ethnicity, either alone or in conjunction with nationhood, acts as a means
of promoting and retaining identity and security in situations of chal­
lenge, destabilization, and crisis. The connection with nationhood and
the nation-state is clearly greater for the modem period and operates in
several ways. First, there are liberal-democratic nation-states, which
define citizenship in terms of membership of an ethnic community,
notably Germany, where }us sanguinis, or law of the blood, still prevails.
Second, there are peoples lacking a national home, such as Palestinians
and Kurds, who base their claims to a nation-state on historic ethno­
national rights, similar to the claims by Zionist Jews before them.
Third, and rather differently, even those migrants who settle as
cultural minorities in a new society may retain links with the homeland,
in terms of what Benedict Anderson (1994) refers to as long-distance
nationalism. This involves a close connection with events in the home­
land. Mechanisms of continuing contact involve the diffusion of
cultural contact and political currents through newspapers, religious
communities or via the telephone and e-mail, as well as by return visits.
Long-distance nationalism includes the figures of German and
Australian 'Croats' lending support to homeland moves to establish a
separate nation-state on the ruins of the old Yugoslavia, and Massachu­
setts Irish assisting the IRA, as well Ukrainians and Tamils in Toronto,
and Albanians in Ravenna, all maintaining a stake in various kinds of
homeland ethnonationalist politics. Long-distance nationalist migrants
who are scattered across the globe in a number of locations in this
manner take on the characteristics of a diaspora (Kotkin 1993).
152 Globalization and the Nation-State

Ethnicity and multiculturalism

A general model of the enduring appeal of ethnicity has been sketched

above, based largely on the symbolic functions performed in contexts of
crisis and threat. One serious qualification of this argument is, however,
necessary before we proceed further. This concerns the material as well
as symbolic advantages that accrue to the membership of ethnic groups.
Ethnicity is not, of course, a phenomenon of exclusively symbolic
significance. This is true in several contexts. The first is where the
ethnicity of majority of powerful groups is used to secure economic and
political advantage in business, the labour market, and governmental
positions. The second is where ethnic differences within a population
are used by third parties, be these employers or colonial administrations,
to divide and rule, undercutting class unity by treating ethnic groups
differently or manipulating existing tensions for advantage. A third case,
worthy of further comment, is the recent development of a politics of
ethnic identity and recognition, associated with multiculturalism.
Multiculturalism is a term whose meaning varies considerably, to the
point of such conceptual confusion that it can mean opposite things to
different commentators. One reason for this is that the same term has
been used to refer to a range of different issues arising in somewhat
different historical and political contexts (Rex 1995). What is common
to all instances of multiculturalism is the context of a multi-ethnic state,
usually the product of processes of culturally diverse population move­
ment, whether through enslavement and transportation, refugee settle­
ment, or voluntary migration. Discourses of multiculturalism have, in
this context, been most highly elaborated in countries of the New
World, notably the USA, Canada, and Australia. Yet the meaning of
multiculturalism within these settings varies dramatically from the
post-Civil Rights emphasis on cultural separatism in the USA, to issues
of social justice and cultural integration within the liberal-democratic
polity of Australia.
In the USA, multiculturalism has been primarily associated with the
politics of ethnic and racial identity and entitlement, and with moves
towards ethnic or racial separatism, with particular reference to educa­
tional curricula and affirmative action programmes. Such moves have
occurred in a context of radical disillusionment with the gains from
the Civil Rights movement epoch. The specific terrain of debates on
multiculturalism as separatism has been the politics of educational
provision and curriculum content (see the debate between Ravitch
1990, 1991, and Asante 1991). While some critics of separatist multi-
Nationalism and Ethnicity 153

culturalism have found a liberal-democratic multiculturalism more

acceptable, other critics have been more uncompromising. Educational
separatism, for example, has been criticized by some liberal­
conservatives as both a violation of principles of social equality and as
socially divisive (Schlesinger 1992). Such criticisms arise from the
perception that special advantages are given to particular persons for
particularistic rather than universalistic reasons. The effect is to
magnify social division and in son1e respects to encourage and
magnify lines of cultural advantage.
This line of criticism may be countered, at a theoretical level, by the
claim that liberal universalism is not socially neutral, privileging
certain dominant groups over others. The strong implication is that
liberalism (in the European sense of the word), with its emphasis on the
rights and obligations of the rational individual citizen, rests on
assumptions about social life that are at once too abstract and seriously
incomplete (Young 1989). Individuals are not social atoms, and the
ideal of free-standing rational individuals has been criticized as being
gender blind (Pateman 1988) as well as indifferent to cultural differ­
ence. Such debates reflect an uneasiness with any kind of social theory
or moral philosophy that is too distant from the constraints and choices
faced by real world actors. They also reflect a particular way of under­
standing the contemporary global context. This is based not on the
global dominance of the Western liberal-democratic individualism, as
predicted by modernization theory, but on a diverse set of challenges to
that model. These come from a range of voices, including racial and
ethnic minorities, post-colonial intellectuals, and feminist movements,
many of them bound up in transborder processes of population move­
ment linked to slavery or global migration.
Multiculturalism based on multi-ethnic population movement is a
characteristic of most New World societies of 1nass migration and
settlement. Echoes of particularly American discourses of multicultur­
alism may thus be found in places such as Canada and Australia.
Nevertheless, the focus of multiculturalism outside the USA has gener­
ally lacked the particular US context of unresolved Black-White
relations and the political agenda of Afro-Americans developed against·
a history of slavery. Pressure for ethnic separatism may be found
outside the USA, notably among the French-speaking Quebecois of
Canada. Nonetheless, in both Canada and Australia from the 1970s
onwards, proponents of multiculturalism have focused far more upon
the responsibility of public policy to mediate between an overarching
framework of universalistic standards common to all and recognition of
154 Globalization and the Nation-State

the specific needs of particular groups or individuals within such

groups (Australian Council on Population and Ethnic Affairs 1982,
Hawkins 1989, Office of Multicultural Affairs 1989, Richmond 1991).
Multiculturalism has been elaborated by many precisely as an cultur­
ally inclusive form of liberal-democratic politics that seeks to unify
rather than divide. This nonetheless adds to conceptual confusion, inas­
much as liberal-democrats in different countries may find themselves
either for or against multiculturalism depending on how it is conceived.
Multicultural policies and programmes, in the Australian, Canadian,
and North American cases, in spite of such differences of historical and
political context, do, however, have some common significance for the
more general discussion of ethnicity. This sten1s from ethnicity
becoming a specific target for government attention in redistributive
social policy formation. At this point, ethnicity ceases to be simply a
matter of the self-ascribed identity of groups and individuals, and
becomes something that is politically and administratively defined as
much from above as from below. We have already come across the
idea of the invention of national and ethnic tradition from above as a
means of political mobilization and state formation. The more recent
case of multiculturalism and the politics of ethnic identity represent
another instance of ethnicity becoming embedded in the broader
processes of political determination.
A number of US commentators have argued that there are very
material as well as symbolic advantages to the possession of an ethnic
identity. These draw in part on the argument that ethnicity has a
dual character, functioning both as a source of identification for
members of a group and as a label utilized by others to represent a
group. This external labelling affect may, of course, often be negative,
as in forms of stereotyping that represent ethnic or racial groups
in pejorative ways. However, it may equally be positive, in the sense
that what are perceived as groups are both socially recognized and
regarded as having political rights and entitlemen¢, whereby ethnic
identity is a recognized basis for the receipt of economic or social
welfare resources. Glazer (1983, pp. 318-19), writing in the context
of Black-White relations in the USA, makes a point of wider signifi­
cance, namely that where law 'names_ groups ... because the groups
are named, individuals inevitably become beneficiaries or non­
beneficiaries of law specifically because of group membership'.
Nagel (1986) sees ethnicity not as a form of primordial expression
but rather as a combination of the ascriptive labelling of a group by
others and a strategic opportunity for those so identified to choose to
Nationalism and Ethnicity 155

maintain or take up a particular identity that is politically recognized.

Such an identification enables those thus identified to compete for
economic as well as political resources. In the US context, this may be
recognition as an official minority, entitled to particular labour market,
small business, or educational advantages.
A situational account of ethnicity, then, must take note of both mate­
rial and symbolic issues, as understood by members of ethnic groups
and wider social structures alike. With this proviso about the interpene­
tration and inseparability of material and sym bo] ic issues, we now
return to the broad thrust of this chapter. Here, it has been argued that
ethnicity retains considerable cultural influence because it effectively
addresses problems of political crisis and insecurity, with deep-seated
symbolic promises of order and security. This model may now be
applied to the issue of globalization. Has globalization created a sense
of cultural crisis and insecurity, and if so, is this why we currently see a
revival of ethnicity and nationalism?

Globalization, nation-state and ethnicity

In Chapters 4 and 5, it was argued that the nation-state cannot be

regarded as being in decline or overrun by globalization. This is in
large measure because global capital is mostly not of an anarchic
variety and still requires state functions to be performed. We may now
add a second reason, to do with the nation rather than state part of the
amalgam that is the nation-state. This concerns the robustness and
persistence of national identity and nation-focused sentiments, often,
although not necessarily, in conjunction with ethnicity. The revival of
nationalism augurs well for the future of the nation-state as a political
form with popular support. But why has this been forthc01ning?
One line of argument recently developed is that the revival of nation­
alism and ethnicity, and, one might add, fundamentalist religion, is to
be interpreted as resistance to the disruptive, impersonal impact of
globalization. The logic behind this argument is that culture is far
harder to globalize than is the economy. One indicator of this is the
spectacular failure of Esperanto as an international language. While
there has been an ·overall decline in the number of languages in the past
century, this in no way signals a convergence toward one world
language. Instead, there are a set of world languages, notably English,
but also Spanish, French, German, and Chinese.
156 Globalization and the Nation-State

Anthony Smith (1990) has argued that culture is hard to globalize

because globalization destroys the particular attachment to history and
place that gives meaning to the lives of individuals. Global culture has
been attempted, in the form of standardized consumer styles found in
McDonald's or Coca-Cola, but these offer few meaningful or enduring
attachments. For Smith, the attraction of national cultures as forms of
social solidarity is that they are 'particular, time-bound and expressive'
(1990, p. 178). Their appeal is thus bounded to those who claim the
reality of a common experience that others do not and cannot directly
share. This may comprise shared 1nemories of a collective history, a
sense of continuity across generations, and some sense of a common
destiny. The implication of this argun1ent is not only that cultural iden­
tity is hard to globalize, but also that the very persistence of national
identities and images speaks to the deficiencies of global identity as an
anchor for meaning and security in the lives of individuals.
The persistence of national identity should not, however, be regarded
as an entirely even and constant phenomenon. Its significance is more
accurately seen as episodic, achieving its greatest significance perhaps
in times of crisis, such as war, when insecurity and pressures of
boundary-setting tend to be more intense. Simon Schama (1991), in
discussing the historical emergence of an idealized sense of homeland,
points to parallels between British and German art in the most uncer­
tain days of the Second World War. Thus:

Frank Newbould, the greatest virtuoso of the patriotic poster. .. projected an

image of the country, as ... sweet and pure - rolling downs, lyrically lit, gently
peopled by loyal dogs and obedient sheep, a stone-walled village, nestling ... at
the base of undulating hills ... Across the North Sea, the Third Reich had an
equally powerful sense of landscape and people... painters ... produced works
that drew on ancient allusions to work and redemption (plowing and growing) ...
together they created a mystical definition of homeland ... (p. 1 l)

Globalization as a process of (both perceived and/ery real) change,

taking place across political and cultural borders, is'perhaps as overtly
challenging as war. Threats of global economic restructuring leading to
job loss, a declining sense of national economic sovereignty in an
interdependent world, perceptions of declining social cohesion associ­
a�ed with mass culturally diverse migration, and the sheer pace of
unfamiliar technological change, nonetheless all create an atmosphere
in which security and identity are felt by many to be under threat. As
with war, although for different reasons, symbols of stability and order
may become attractive and may, of course, be manipulated by power-
Nationalism and Ethnicity 157

holders, as occurs in wartime, to maintain particular kinds of political

and cultural order. Nationalism, in the sense of cultural identity and
association with both history and place, thus remains a fundamental
means of responding to globalization, as it is to war. It is obviously
very far from dead, and Smith clearly establishes the core of one
argument for why this should be so. What is not so clear is whether
contemporary nationalism is necessarily to be seen as a reaction
against globalization per se and whether the global and the national
should be seen as warring principles, locked in a conflict that one or
other will win, even if only for a limited period of time.
To assist in resolving these questions, it is worthwhile recalling an
alternative perspective developed in Chapter 1 . Here, global develop­
ments are seen as one element in a complex 'field' (Robertson) in
which global and national, universal and particular interact and are
mutually interdependent and self-constituting. One way of describing
this is in terms of glocalization. This approach emphasizes paradox and
interpenetration rather than any kind of simple clash between the global
and the national, or the economic and the political or cultural.
One pertinent example of this is the paradox that the institutions of
the nation-state and nationalist consciousness have been globalized, in
the sense of being diffused across all regions of the world. All who
claim to be peoples expect rights of self-determination as a nation and
recognition as a nation-state, with a seat at the UN. In this way, one
may speak of the globalization of particularism, that is, of the model of
nationhood as the embodiment of the specific claims of particular
groups with a discrete history and identity of their own. The paradox is
that the institutions of the nation-state and nationalism have been
diffused across existing boundaries and borders, typically leading to the
collapse of imperial and colonial borders whi1e concunently redrawing
fresh boundaries as new nations are fonned. At the sa1ne time, the form
that nationhood and national consciousness takes in these various
settings varies markedly, such that we may speak of the particulariza­
tion of nation-state building.
One important way in which nation-states vary is in how member­
ship of the nation is conceived in terms of the formal requirements of
citizenship. Within recent European history, as Brubaker (1992) points
out, a major distinction is evident between French and German concep­
tions of nationhood and citizenship. In France, this has centred on polit­
ical understandings of nationhood, based upon birth (jus soli) (and/or
permanent residence) within French territory. This approach is more
conducive to the political inclusion of diverse cultural groups, as
158 Globalization and the Nation-State

citizens at least, than i s the alternative German model. Here, in

contrast, understandings of nation hood have been more culturally
centred on the German people and German ethnicity Uus sanguinis),
whose integrity predates that of the German nation-state. This focus is
far less conducive to the integration of diverse cultural elements into
German nationhood, as contemporary second-generation Turkish 'guest
workers' have found. The former model is also to be found elsewhere,
of course, as in societies of European settlement such as Australia and
Canada, in contrast with the greater cultural focus in contemporary
Serbia and Croatia.
Conceptions of nationhood may thus vary considerably. Nonethe­
less, there remains a more general paradox involved in the revival of
nationalism of whatever kind in the epoch of globalization. The
paradox is that globalization has assisted in constituting a world of
discrete nations and nationalist politics by diffusing models of political
organization, even while much nationalism has arisen as a reaction
against larger political forces. Such forces may be described as aspects
of globalization, as in the case of Western colonialization and global
capitalist economic domination. The nationalism of the former colonial
nations of Africa and Asia, for example, may be read as resistance to
aspects of capitalist or Western globalization. However, in other cases,
the external force against which nationalism reacts may be better
described as regional in character. This applies in the case of political
Empires such as the old Soviet Union, or multinational or ethnic states
like Great Britain or the old Yugoslavia. The recent nationalism of
Latvians, Ukrainians, and Chechnyans, for example, is related to the
regional political dominance of the old Soviet Union. In yet other vari­
ants, the recent nationalism of Serbs and Croats, or Scots and Welsh, is
related more to grievances associated with the terms of their incorpora­
tion into wider national political entities. Regionalisn1, in its trans­
national rather than subnational sense, has also prompted various kinds
of national counter-reaction within the EU. Tensio�s over European
and national sovereignty have been reflected in the troubled reaction to
the terms of the Maastricht Treaty and to particular issues of policy or
law, such as the management of 'mad cow disease' or the legitimacy of
the corporal punishment of children. Nationalism here, following
Billig, may take mundane as well as politically explosive forms,
expressed in parliaments and court houses as well as in the streets.
In this way, one cannot regard nationalism _as a reaction against glob­
alization per se. There are a range of different external entities against
which nationalist movements struggle, and these may be national or
Nationalism and Ethnicity 159

regional rather than global in scope. In addition, the grievances at the

heart of national feeling pertain as much to symbolic value-laden
issues, including cultural domination and humiliation, as to material
exploitation through global economic mechanisms.
There is, however, a further major line of objection to seeing the
current world in terms of fissures between the global and the national,
and between global capital and national political culture. This objection
might be labelled in a shorthand way as the problem of cultural
pluralism. The difficulty here is that contemporary identity takes many
forms, some of which differentiate different groups of people from
each other, some of which are evident as multiple identities within
particular individuals. Such identities may be local, national, regional
or global, or a combination thereof.
The following example may help to establish the face-value nature of
this problem. It concerns migrants to Australia from particular Greek
Islands, who may see themselves simultaneously as Greek and
Australian, may have taken out Australian citizenship, but may also see
themselves as part of the Greek diaspora around the globe, with family
in the USA as well as Greece and Australia. Yet they also simultane­
ously identify with their island of origin. Let us further disaggregate the
category 'they' by generation and gender. While those who first
migrated were both Greek, the children born in Australia may have
intermarried, perhaps with an Anglo-Australian, perhaps with a Serbian
migrant to Australia, who is also part of the Orthodox church. One
member of the family may have returned permanently to Greece.
Maybe an Anglo-Australian wife has returned with her Greek­
Australian husband to Greece (see the testimony of Bouras 1986). Now
let us introduce the question of salience of identities. ls ethnicity and
nationality the strongest identity for the group of individuals involved?
Do the younger generation identify n1ore with global youth culture,
around secular icons such as Kurt Cobain or Michael Jordan, than with
symbols of Greek heritage? And would this change if Greece became
involved with war with Turkey, just as the Croatian heritage of second­
genyration Croatian-Australians became more intense with the break­
up of the former Yugoslavia (Skrbis 1994).
Such considerations can be replicated many times with other
examples from other groups and places around the globe. The point of
this example is to throw into doubt the simple idea of a polarization
between global and national identities, and to reinforce Robertson's
sense of the complex interpenetration of global, national, regional,
local, and individual elements within the global field. The choice here
160 Globalization and the Nation-State

is thus nowhere near as simple as deciding how far globalization is

creating global people or, as a reaction, reborn nationalists.
When Smith argues that the idea of global culture lacks the speci­
ficity and historicity that individuals require to find meaning and secu­
rity in their lives, he gives insufficient attention to the ways in which
the global and the national or local may co-exist in people's lives.
Global culture is taken to be a singular postnational identity and carica­
tured as a syncretic commodity, constructed out of bits from here and
there, but decontextualized so that it can be packaged and sold in a
standardized form. This way of dismissing the possible development of
global culture has some force, but it is liable to the counter-criticism .
that it neglects the possibility of particular global cultures forming,
linked initially to particular origins but diffusing outward in space and
time. Syncretization and hybridization may thereby create viable
cultural forms to which individuals may attach meaning and value.
From this viewpoint, the dichotomy between the global and the
national or ethnic is too crude and simplistic.
We have focused so far on the presumption that globalization is a
destabilizing, unsettling, even threaten_ing experience, and that nation­
alism and ethnicity may in part be appropriate reactions to such diffi­
culties. But what if aspects of globalization are received positively or
blended with subglobal identities and cultural practices? Is this
happening, and if so, is it leading to a new cosmopolitanism? These are
the issues to which we now tum in Chapter 7.