Cultural Nationalism

Nationalism may involve the combination of culture and politics, but for many of its most prominent students, the former is subordinate to the latter. In this view, nationalist appeals to culture are a means to a political end; that is, the achievement of statehood. Hence, for Ernest Gellner (2006 [1983]: 124), culture is but an epiphenomenon, a ‘false-consciousness … hardly worth analyzing …’. For their part, Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger (1983) suggest that national traditions are ‘invented’ by elites concerned with the legitimization of state power. Similarly, John Breuilly (2006 [1982]: 11) defines national movements as ‘political movements … which seek to gain or exercise state power and justify their objectives in terms of nationalist doctrine’. A broadly similar characterization of nationalism can be found in the writings of many other esteemed scholars (Giddens, 1985; Laitin, 2007; Mann, 1995; Tilly, 1975).
The privileging of politics over culture remains the dominant approach to understanding nationalism, but it is not without criticism. There is now a vast and rapidly growing body of literature insisting that the role of culture should be made more prominent. In opposition to the argument that nationalist appeals to culture are but an exercise in legitimation, this body of literature suggests that they can be ends unto themselves. This latter phenomenon, generally referred to as cultural nationalism, is the subject of this chapter. The chapter proceeds as follows. I begin with the definition and history of cultural nationalism before discussing several key themes in its study. To conclude, I briefly outline several lines of research that I believe hold particular potential for developing the field. In the light of the huge array of literature on cultural nationalism, the review is focused on seminal contributions.