Jean Gove`
23rdMarch2005, 14:39
Ethnicity, Will, And The State
M. Raphael Johnson, July 22, 2003
Ethno-nationalism, in one form or another, is one socio-political vision that has always existed, rather than being purely a product of abstract theorizing, as liberalism or cosmopolitanism has been. There is no time in history where the cultural community, unified by language and historical experience, did not hold sway over those who were born under it. Whether it politicized itself into the modern, flawed notion of the “nation-state” in pre-modern times is another question and one irrelevant to social theory. Whether the ethno-linguistic attachments absolutely necessary for human life “politicized” themselves at any time is something different from the power of the ethnic and linguistic tie in shaping human perceptions and making sense out of one’s environment. This author takes the idea of “nationalism” in the Hederian, rather than the contemporary, fashion. Ethno-nationalism or ethno-communalism concern the idea that human beings are defined, molded and shaped by institutions and ideas having developed in a specific cultural, that is, ethno-linguistic, context. This particular idea is substantially distinct from the straw-man definitions of nationalism the Modernist school has developed over the years. Ethnic nationalism or communalism is therefore a product of antiquity, while the statism that often passes for “nationalism” is a pure product of Modernity.
Continue: http://www.theidyllic.com/php/article.php?article=8
M. Raphael Johnson, July 22, 2003
Ethno-nationalism, in one form or another, is one socio-political vision that has always existed, rather than being purely a product of abstract theorizing, as liberalism or cosmopolitanism has been. There is no time in history where the cultural community, unified by language and historical experience, did not hold sway over those who were born under it. Whether it politicized itself into the modern, flawed notion of the “nation-state” in pre-modern times is another question and one irrelevant to social theory. Whether the ethno-linguistic attachments absolutely necessary for human life “politicized” themselves at any time is something different from the power of the ethnic and linguistic tie in shaping human perceptions and making sense out of one’s environment. This author takes the idea of “nationalism” in the Hederian, rather than the contemporary, fashion. Ethno-nationalism or ethno-communalism concern the idea that human beings are defined, molded and shaped by institutions and ideas having developed in a specific cultural, that is, ethno-linguistic, context. This particular idea is substantially distinct from the straw-man definitions of nationalism the Modernist school has developed over the years. Ethnic nationalism or communalism is therefore a product of antiquity, while the statism that often passes for “nationalism” is a pure product of Modernity.
Continue: http://www.theidyllic.com/php/article.php?article=8