Ernest Gellner’s theory of nationalism and its Durkheimian flaws_Saed Kakei

7/31/2019 Ernest Gellners theory of nationalism and its Durkheimian flaws_Saed Kakei

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Understanding critical theory and its interpretations of international relations

By: Saed Kakei,

Ph.D. Student (No1144759),

Theories of Ethnicity and Nationalism(CARD 6651-DL1)

Professor Dustin Berna, Ph.D.

Nova Southeastern University

Department of Conflict Analysis & Resolution PhD Program

June 09, 2012


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Ernest Gellners theory of nationalism and its Durkheimian flaws

Abstract

Unlike the far too many contemporary definitions for political terms, Nationalism is one that has

yet to have a precise definition for a political phenomenon that has been causing unprecedented

human sufferings, at least, in modern history. One reason for this lack of a coherent definition is

the attached sentiment to the political wills of those who advocate nationalism, including members

of organizations such as Zionism and its imitator the African-American Nation of Islam on the one

hand, and those who oppose it on the other hand. As such, with the recurrence of nationalism as

one of the major causes of violence, especially in the post-Cold War era, Ernest Gellners theory of

nationalism has been receiving load applauses in many academic circles primarily by political

scientists from western individualist cultures. In light on this, this short essay argues that because

of its Durkheimian functionalist subjectivity and because of its contradictions with the nature of

foreign policies of nations-states often violating the principles of international law, Gellners

theory of nationalism is flawed.

Introduction

In my earlier essay titled Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism: A Book Critique,

written while taking the elective graduate course of History, memory, and conflict resolution

offered at the Nova Southeastern Universitys Department of Conflict Analysis and Resolution

Ph.D. program, I provided some essential examinations of Gellners second edition of Nations and

Nationalism ( See http://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc031412SK.html).

In this essay, however, a side from providing a brief summary of the books expression and

its thesis development, I will briefly discuss the intellectual connection between Emile and
http://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc031412SK.htmlhttp://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc031412SK.html


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Durkheim and Gellner. Afterward, I will examine Durkheims economically functionalist influence

on Gellners modernist theory of nationalism. In so doing, I will consider the effects Gellners

functionalist method of description, particularly his definition of nationalism in relation to a

nation-states issues of national interests. Lastly, I will explore the possibilities of reformulating

Gellners functionalist arguments in a non-functionalist mode by which reasons lead concerns in

the process of understanding knowledge.

A brief summary of Gellners Nations and Nationalism

The central thesis of Gellners Nations and Nationalism argues that nationalism is a

powerful sentiment that holds a key component of passage from an agrarian community to an

industrial society in which the latter requires a politically defined state that can create and enable a

belonging, knowledgeable and appreciated culture. Gellner expounds this discourse by sustaining

that the only extraordinary change since the recorded history began has been the transition from

agrarian to industrial society. He maintains that this underpinning transition has holistically

transformed humanitys basic social relations to its overall political structure based on the

goodness of industrialization. Like most modernist scholars, Gellner pays specific attention to

human quest for knowledge; and, as knowledge peaks, he believes that it will be standardized as

high culture and persistently becomes the most essential requirement of industrialism.

Inaccurately, however, Gellner thinks that only a nation-state, as the congruent unit, has the

legitimate authority and the ability to indoctrinate and maintain qualities of homogeneous high

culture on an uprooted labour force. In furthering this argument, he asserts that modern industrial

society is based on constant cognitive and complex economic progress. Such an assertion requires

a theoretical reasoning. Therefore, Gellner selects Emile Durkheims functionalist theory of

division of labour. After patching some of its flaws, Gellner provides that because of the division


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of labour in modern industrial society is more complex and constantly evolving and requires liberal

and context-free communication between members of society, the progress of high culture

necessitates a nationally homogeneous state.

By focusing on the importance of will and culture for the construction of a theory of

nationalism, Gellner informs his reader that a top-down homogenization incites the reaction of

the excluded ethnic minority to protect its own will and culture. Nonetheless, if this minority group

needs to be transformed into a high culture, then it has to have a legitimate political authority.

Gellner goes on to tackle various typologies of nationalism. In so doing, he rejects four of

the highly contested theories of nationalism. First, in concert with Elie Kedouries nationalist

theory, he argues that a nationalist theory which claims to be a natural and self-evident and self-

generating is false (Gellner, 1983, p. 129), because it owes its plausibility and compelling nature

only to a very special set of circumstances, which do indeed obtain now, but which were alien to

most of humanity and history (1983, p. 126). Second, this time Gellner disputes Kedouries

theory by describing it as an artificial consequence of ideas which did not need ever to be

formulated (1983, p. 129). Third, he ridicules Marxism for claiming that the awakening message

[of nationalism] was intended for classes, but by some terrible postal error was delivered to

nations (1983, p.129). Fourth, Gellner dismisses the Dark Gods theoretical claim that

nationalism is the re-emergence of the atavistic forces of blood or territory on the bases that

these dark forces are neither nicer nor nastier than the pre-nationalism ones (1983, p. 130).

Gellner speculates that when an industrial society is alleviated and stabilized, nationalism

will be modified in one way or the other (1983, pp. 108-9). Then, he goes on to assume that an

increase in international freedom and the shared limitations of industrial society may reduce the

sharpness of international conflicts (1983, p. 116). Finally, Gellner believes that Immanuel Kant


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did not ideologically play a significant role in the development of nationalism; therefore, he was

the source of all evil. Gellner maintains that Kant is the very last person whose vision could be

credited with having contributed to nationalism (1983, p. 132).

Durkheims intellectual influence over Gellner

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), a modernist French sociologist, was the first theorist

advocating institutionalization in social science. His main difficultly was that of legitimate modern

order. By examining traditional societies formed by various pre-industrial institutions such as the

family, religion, and segmental or clan-base communities, Durkheim argued that the formation of

their social order was based on high integration. However, this did not solve his order dilemma.

Rather, he wanted to understand the order that holds societies together in the modern industrial

world. Therefore, Durkheim applied two sociological methodologiesstructural and functional

to his positivist research design with which he was able to develop his social solidarity theory of

division of labour. With this theory, Durkheim argued that pre-agrarian societies were able to

develop their subsequent agrarian civilizations because of unity they created by forming the family

institution. Then, to achieve social cohesion between various family units, religion was

recognized to embrace a smaller and smaller portion of social life. Originally, it pervades

everything; everything social is religious (Durkheim, 1933, p. 169). Durkheim categorized this

method of social solidarity as mechanical solidarity. Mechanical, because the cohesion which

unites the elements of an inanimate body, as opposed to that which makes a unity out of the

elements of a living body (1933, p. 148). In other words, social solidarity is derived from like-

mindedness and it is bound by conscience collective which means the totality of beliefs and

sentiments common to average members of the same society (Thomson, 2002, p. 59). Gellner

subjectively terms Durkheims conscience collective as low culture. He furthers that [d]uring


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the early period of industrialization, of course, low cultures are also liable to be seized on and

turned into diacritical markers of the disadvantaged ones, [] notably if they define large and

territorially more or less compact populations (1983, p. 74).

Back to Durkheims accounts, he believed that conscience collective and social cohesion

cannot help to overcome the process of industrialization and its rapid urbanization that has created.

He asserted that not only the family institution is incapable of keeping its unity, but also religion is

constantly resisting the domination of modern atomization. Durkheim explained that little by

little, political, economic, scientific functions free themselves from the religious function... God,

who was at first present in all human relations, progressively withdraws from them; he abandons

the world to men and their disputes (1933, p. 169). Parallel to this gradual process, mechanical

solidarity transforms to organic solidarity with which modern civilization become unstable in a

constant crisis because of its egotistic individuals. Durkheim described organic solidarity to be like

the 'organs' of a body which are functionally interdependent and constituted by a system of

different organs each of which has a special role, and which are themselves formed of

differentiated parts (1933, p. 181).

Inconsistently however, Durkheim related that as societies become modernized due to the

industrialization advancements, their integration progressively increases; and, 'the unity of the

organism increases as this individuation of the parts is more marked (1933, p. 148).

Consequently, the division of labour holds people together, because they need each other,

especially as their population grow in volume, density and then in moral density. Paradoxically,

after arguing that Durkheims organic solidarity is problematic, Gellner modifies it asserting that

industrialization and its urban civilization is a high literate culture and that [a] high culture

pervades the whole of society, defines it, and needs to be sustained by the polity. Thatis the secret


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of nationalism (1983, p.18). Gellner concludes that in the agrarian world, high culture co-exists

with low cultures, and, needs a church [] to sustain it. In the industrial world high cultures

prevail, but they need a state not a church, and they need a state each. That is one way of summing

up the emergence of the nationalist age (1983, pp. 72-3).

So, just as Durkheim structurally distinguished between three radically different societies:

highly integrated pre-agrarian society, conscience collective agrarian society, and egotistic

individualist modern society, Gellner embraces these fundamentally different types of social

structures in his materialist interpretation of history and, with minor terminological adjustments, he

terms them as: hunter-gatherer society, agrarian society, and industrial society. However, unlike

Durkheim who used social solidarity as a classification method, Gellner uses culture as social

development measure considering: hunter-gatherer society as wild illiterate culture; agrarian

society as low literate culture, and industrial society as the high literate culture. Yet, it is critically

important to mention that Gellner is differing with Durkheim on some concepts of division of

labour. In particular, on the formation of the modern industrial society where unlike Durkheim,

Gellner considers its labour market as uniform mass, rather than as individuals because the

standardization of expression and comprehension" leads to the capacity for context-free

communication (Conversi, 2000, p. 102).

Another aspect of Durkheimian influence on Gellners theory of nationalism is

functionalism. Durkheim used the functional approach to develop his theory of division of labour

in society. He defines the term function as follows: "It expresses the relation existing between

these [societal] movements and corresponding needs of the organism" (1933, p. 49). Generally,

every social organism has multidimensional needs and at the centre of these needs are knowledge,

economy, and power. It appears that Gellner uses Durkheims functional approach to emphasize on


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three categories of human activity: the economy, power, and knowledge. Nonetheless, Gellners

functionalism is illustrated as follows:

So the economy needs both the new type of central culture and the central state;

the culture needs the state; and the state probably needs the homogeneous cultural

branding of its flock [] In brief, the mutual relationship of a modern culture and

state is something quite new, and springs, inevitably, from the requirements of a

modern economy (1983, p. 140).

What Gellner advocates here is in fact a homogenous state formation that needs a political

response to afunctionalimperative: social mobility due to economic needs makes it necessary the

creation of a collective identity on the newly populated territories. The creation of a

homogeneous collective identity is not rapid as Gellner thinks. Rather, it is a gradual

transformative process that requires a great deal of assimilationism. From a postmodernist

perspective, which this paper follows, assimilationism is a sociopolitical policy-practice designed

to assimilate politically inactive aboriginal communities and uprooted individuals into the

dominant homogeneous state. The relative non-violent functionality of assimilationism achieves

greater possibilities of cultural unity as well as communal-state congruency. As for nationalism, it

is an aggressive offensive/defensive political philosophy intends to attain and maintain the national

interests of the politically active nations in both state and non-state formations.

Nowhere in Gellners accounts have we seen any reference to national interests. In fact, his

modernist definition of nationalism as it is primarily a political principle, which holds that the

political and the national unit should be congruent (1983, p. 1), has some serious constitutional

flaws. If this Gellnerian definition is accepted as accurate, then a sovereign nation would have left


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with no choice but to violate its own, let alone other sovereign nations constitutional codes in

pursuit of its vital national interests beyond its own legally defined and internationally legitimized

borders. Admittedly, while nationalism asserts that humanity be divided into nation states,

fundamentally however, it contradicts its own intentions to attain and maintain the national

interests of the politically active unit, be it internationally recognised as a legitimate state or has yet

to earn that identity to play games in club of nations.

The Gellnerian nationalism contradiction is deeply embedded within the elusive rules of

international law. For example, the principle of non-intervention in contemporary international

law has been repeatedly violated under the pretexts of national security and the defence of vital

national interests. Therefore, Gellners theory of nationalism is far from the political legitimacy it

claims to have. Also, its definition, as discussed, deeply offends the very nationalist sentiment

which Gellner cautions not to violate the nationalist principle of congruence of state and

nation (1983, p. 134). Additionally, this statutory defect in Gellners nationalism adds more

confusion to the complexity created by the modernists theories of nations and nationalism as

attempts to substitute nationalism with Durkheims retreat of religion as assumed in his modernist

notion of organic solidarity.

Conclusion

After providing a short summary for Gellners most celebrated book Nations and

Nationalism, this paper discussed Durkheims intellectual influence on Gellners theorization of

nationalism. It has provided that Gellner benefited from Durkheims sociological structural

methodology to differentiate between the three historical stages of social structure: hunter-gatherer

society, agrarian society, and industrial society. Similarly, this paper provided that Gellner utilized

the Durkheimian functional approach to emphasize on three categories of human activity: the


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economy; power; and knowledge to illustrate the congruent needs of a nation-state to achieve a

homogeneous culture.

As a postmodernist graduate student, the author of this paper argued that Gellners theory

of nationalism, aside from having a modernist statutory defect, does not match the needed

congruence for a homogeneous state. Instead, as defined, assimilationism is suggested to fit

Gellners theory of nationalism. Finally, as Gellner ridicules Marxism with the Wrong Address

Theory (1983, p.129), this paper concludes that Gellner himself has fallen into the same trap for

thinking that his version of nationalism may eventually replace the Durkheimian concern for the

retreat of religion.

References:

Conversi, D. (2000). Gellner, Ernest (1925-1995). In Smith, A. D. and Leoussi, A. (eds)

Encyclopaedia of nationalism. Oxford: Transaction Books.


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Durkheim, E. (1933). The Division of Labor in Society. Glencoe, III: Free Press.

Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Kakei, S. (2012). Ernest Gellners nations and nationalism: A book critique. Washington:

Kurdish Aspect. Retrievable from:http://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc031412SK.html

Thomson, K. (2002). Emile Durkheim. (Rev. ed.). New York: Routledge.
http://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc031412SK.htmlhttp://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc031412SK.htmlhttp://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc031412SK.html

Ernest Gellner’s theory of nationalism and its Durkheimian flaws_Saed Kakei

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