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Sociology Study ISSN 2159‐5526  July 2013, Volume 3, Number 7, 523‐530

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Pros and Cons of Nationalism  İsa Erbaşa    Abstract  This  paper  considers  the  debate  that  has  developed  in  studies  of  pros  and  cons  of  nationalism.  Nationalism  deals  with  identification of a nation, group, or country. It is believed or viewed within a multicultural state. Nationalism can be defined  as  national  pride  or  patriotism.  This  is  not  a  new  idea,  it  has  been  for  centuries,  but  the  concept  has  changed.  In  general,  nationalism is  described more negative concepts as opposed to more positive ones. Nowadays nationalism is linked either  directly or implicitly to racism. Nationalism plays a great role in world politics today. There is also another negative argument  that can include the belief that one state is superior to all of the other states. This paper begins by defining the pros and cons  of nation and nationalism. The topic of pros and cons of nationalism creates one of the most important issues in the world  today,  and  the  issue  promises  to  continue  to  the  next  century.  People  should  be  acknowledged  in  order  to  develop  and  increase their awareness and understanding of nationalism. This study also examines the importance and unimportance of  nationalism in a country. The paper uses quantitative method with survey questionnaire. The structured questionnaire has  been used to collect data and asked teachers and students. The paper uses content analysis in this part within the framework  of  the  qualitative  method.  The  respondents  have  quite  diverse  backgrounds  which  is  very  important  to  have  a  wider  perspective. The results of this  study show that there have been diverse views regarding the term nationalism. It has been  found out that the teachers and students have not been quite comfortable and positive regarding the nationalism.    Keywords  Nation, nationalism, state, identity, culture   

Nations and nationalisms are playing a major role in world politics today. Sometimes they are considered as conflict body parts of the world politics. For example, the crises in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine and also in the other parts of the world show that nationalism is on the decline. The shape of nations and the character of the movements, which build them in the high age of nationalism, go on to have deep and lasting results on the contemporary world. Nationalism cannot be completely separated from ethnicity. So ethnic differences and inequalities can create nationalist movements which would seek political autonomy. Nationalism and national identity usually emerge from the political, economic, technological, and religious

perception, as it has been mentioned, the ethnic differences and inequalities. Some people can see nationalism well and some people can see nationalism bad. It depends on the people’s knowledge that how much they know about nationalism. In general nationalism gives people a sense of pride for their country and this pride encourages and motivates the people and they try to do their best for their countries. Nationalism depends on people how they want to see

aEuropean University of Tirana, Albania 

  Correspondent Author:  İsa  Erbaş,  Turgut  Ozal  College,  Rruga  Bernardin  Palja,  Ndertesa 15, Hyrja 1 Njesia Bashkiake Nr.6 Tirana, Albania  E‐mail: [email protected] 

524 it and which part they want to look at.

BACKGROUND OF NATIONALISM  Nation is one of the most discussed concepts in modern social and political thoughts. According to Wilson (2001: 2): “Its precise character has been subjected to a wide variety of interpretations, with language, ethnicity, geography, religion, and shared experience all having been cited as fundamental determinants”. Anderson (2006: 157) claimed that “since the end of the eighteenth century nationalism has undergone a process of modulation and adaptation, according to different eras, political regimes, economies and social structures”. It is very important how nationalism is understood and thought. Nationalism is the potential basis of popular legitimacy or expression of support for state power (Mark 2003: 6). Nationalism is not only a political movement or principle for nationalists, what is at stake is not only power but identity (Mondal 2003: 19). Hobsbawm (1992: 37-38) claimed that there were three criteria to become a nation: (1) its historic assosiation with a current state; (2) the existence of a long esteblished cultural elite, possessing a national written literary and administrative vernacular; and (3) a proven capacity of conquest. It is very important to find out what the authors have written and argued about nations and nationalism. Mondal (2003: 15) argued that modernity was essential to contemporary discussions of nations and even those who argued that the “core” features of nations predated modernity itself. The cultural community is the basis of the nation which existed before the cultural community became a nation and it concedes that it was the advent of modernity that radically transformed those features into what we would now recognize as nations. Mondal (2003: 17) further continued stating that as a result nations can be seen to be a product of nationalist ideology but not a

Sociology  Study  3(7)  pre-existing and objective cultural category of a state. There is a difference between a nation and an ethnic group. A nation from an ethnic group or any other collectivity has to be the nation’s self-derived desire to achieve political sovereignty within a recognized territory (Dawisha 2003: 8). It is stated that “Identity is not a fact of society; it is a process of negotiation among people and interest groups. Identity describes the society and society is constituted by identity” (McSweeney 2004: 73-74). The role of identity in negotiating the new international order would be fully justified (Kupchan 2001: 39). Identity and nationl interests cannot be seperated. Wheeler (2008: 17) claimed that identity led to particular conceptions of the national interest. According to Asano (2005: 34): “the concept of identity, whether it is of an ethnic or a religious community, on the other hand, loaded with emotion and spoken of in terms of material objects and manners of life”. Agote (2006) argued that nationalism, among other things, connoted a species of identity and, in the psychological sense of the term, denoted self-definition. It is stated that any identity is a set of ideas, a symbolic construct. It is a particularly powerful construct, so it defines a person’s position in his/her social world. It carries within itself expectations of the person and of people from different classes within that individual’s social settings, and thus orients his/her actions (Agote 2006: 22). Guelke (2010: 28) claimd: The ideologies of both the MAS and the MIP include all the elements typical of nationalism: humankind is divided naturally into nations; each nation is internally homogeneous, with an identity defined by differential ethnic traits that differentiates it from other nations; a person’s freedom and authentic existence depend on his or her identification with a nation; loyalty to one’s nation takes priority over loyalties to class or other groups; a nation is only free to develop if it controls its own sovereign, independent state; the state should serve the interests of the nation, its language and its culture; the world as a whole will only be free and at peace

Erbaş  when all nations are free and independent.

For many years, scholars are interested in nationalism: They have debated and discussed the most appropriate manner to approach nationalism, and it is still quarreled over what motivates ordinary citizens to take risks and engage in collective action (Barreto 2009: 4). For this reason, nationalism is a tool that motivates people.

METHOD OF THE STUDY  This study has two parts. The first part is about general information of nationalism. This information has been taken from secondary sources. The sources have been treated documents as a source of the study. The second part of the study is an empirical case study. The data has been collected from the interviews that have been conducted in Albania.

THE PERCEPTION AND UNDERSTANDING  OF NATION  Dawisha (2003: 13) defined nation as a human solidarity, whose members believed that they formed a coherent cultural whole, and who manifested a strong desire for political separateness and sovereignty. Nations are very important for states. By the help of nations, states can strengthen its power and develop its domestic and foreign policies. Culturalists define nation as a cultural community (Mondal 2003: 15). Mondal (2003: 16) also underlined the importance of nation by arguing that “politics is important, it is only because it is the expression of a pre-existing nation; the nation exists ‘objectively’ regardless of whether it is organized politically”. According to Agote (2006: 45): The nation is an idea of community (mystically shared by all citizens) segregated by the state. The central functions of this idea are: (1) the production of society in proportion to the state; (2) the oversight of primitive foundational violence

525 (all states emerge out of civil wars); and (3) the cancellation of essential relationships of sociopolitical meaning of differential territories whose unification forms the state territory.

Nationalists typically allege that nations have been existent for hundreds, usually thousands of years though more often than not they are claimed to have been idle, or sleeping since some mythical “golden age”. Nevzat (2005: 18) further claimed that the nation has continuously existed since ancient times, but without national consciousness. Nation helps people understand identity and national identity. Prior to nationalisim identity, national identity was duscussed. So each member of nation should do something for his/her country instead of waiting his/her country to do something for them.

IDENTITY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY  Cultures are also important for identity because cultures shape individual identity (Smits 2005: 12). Smits (2005: 5) went further claiming that identity was shaped by “national character” as well as class and social position. McSweeney (2004: 162) claimed that people lived in a culture of fluid identities. McSweeney (2004: 165) went further claiming that identity was a social act as well as a structure of meaning. Notions of identity are related to belonging to a social group (May 2004: 8). Identity politics have given a sharper and often destructive twist to struggles for cultural recognition (Loescher 2011: 99). According to Katzenstein (2009: 138), identity was that people often came to identify with a group of others because people shared common interests. An identity acts as a cultural frame that tells people who they are and how they ought to act. For example, “social group requires being able to distinguish itself from others in ways that give it a relatively positive social identity” (May 2004: 26). Yurdusev (2003: 50) stated that identity came from its being with others, not just from others. Another author described

526 identity as a central need of individuals but a need that can be met without conflict. That identity often seems a source of conflict is misleading. He continued claiming that it was a use of state power to buttress an identity that created conflict (Hilkermeier 2004: 65). Barnett (1998: 47) argued: Identities, in short, are not only personal or psychological, but are social, defined by the actor’s interaction with and relationship to others; therefore, all political identities are contingent, dependent on the actor’s interaction with others and place within an institutional context. It is mainly a social identity that generates a positive identification between peoples of members states.

Katzenstein (2009: 135-136) described national identity: As one form of collective identity. National identity could be a source of conflict for groups in a society who did not think of themselves as belonging to the nation and, if the patterns of interaction became conflict, could result in some groups deciding to form a new or alternative nation.

National traditions and beliefs about national identity were fundamental at the inception of foreign aid in the 1950s (Veen 2011: 108). Veen (2011: 28) went further: National identity can be conceptualized as a basic worldview, combined with ideas about the type of national image a nation aspires to, as well as a sense of the values represented by the nation. The intermediate category of ideas, general attitudes and frames connects the core values of national identity to the causal ideas that shape policy choices.

Geppert (2011: 347) also claimed that the process of national identity construction cannot be detached from the socio-political setting in which it took place. The importance of national identity is never decreasing (Barnett 1998: 91). The process of national identity construction is closely linked to power (Geppert 2011: 350). McSweeney (2004: 88) stated

Sociology  Study  3(7)  that identity can also be an instrument or weapon in the security policies of others as, for instance, in the stimulation of ethnic unrest for the purpose of destabilizing a foreign government, or in the instrumentality of national identity in the interests of the state. For this reason, national identity is a significant and essential element of the organizational actors’ sense making processes (Geppert 2011: 371). According to Yurdusev (2003: 140), national identity has become the major social identification. Wheeler underlined the importance of identity. According to him, identity led to special conceptions of the national interest: “what the country cares about and what aspects of its ‘collective self’ as a result of national interests the polity attempts to achieve through global politics” (Wheeler 2008: 153). National identity is a context-bound resource and some contexts are more fertile in providing various discourses around national identity than others. (Geppert 2011: 375). Finally, the argument revolved around national identity, the definition of national interest, and the kind of political, economic, and social systems that Turkey should adopt. In the course of these arguments, basic decisions regarding Turkey’s foreign policy (defense and national security) became inextricably intertwined with the national identity of Turkey (Bozdaglioglu 2003: 7).

PROS AND CONS OF NATIONALISM  Firstly, it is very important to know and understand what nationalism means. “While its agenda is justified on an ethnic basis, ultimately, nationalism is a political ideology. Nationalism is a phenomenon that emerged in the late eighteenth century” (Barreto 2009: 13). Nationalism was instead the result of social processes that forged solidarity on the basis of networks of shared communication or interests (Mark 2003: 15). “Nationalism first emerged in England, where it was ushered in by Protestantism but was then quickly replaced by the consciousness of one’s dignity

Erbaş  as an individual” (Mark 2003: 13). When the nationalism first emerged, the aim of that was to help to assess such arguments about the role of language and communication (Mark 2003: 15). According to Mondal (2003: 22), nationalism was a form of cultural politics. Mondal (2003: 29) went further: “Nationalism does not seek to put a political border around an already unified culture; rather, it seeks to unify a disparity of cultures within a certain delimited boundary”. Nationalism is linked to the construction and reproduction of the national identities of many people (Wilson 2001: 1). Bashford (2004: 115) described nationalism as a modern project which united the complex emergence of political economy and with the development of liberal democracy and concepts of citizenship. Nation and nationality is very important for each state and nation. Gallner (1983: 6) emphized that “a man must have a nationality as he must have a nose and two ears; a deficiency in any of these particulars is not inconceivable and does from time to time occur, but only as a result of some disaster, and it is itself a disaster of a kind”. “Nationalism historically implies the politicization of collective identity when one considers that political power is the expression of a political community termed the nation. In a territorial state, only one power, and, therefore, one depository nation of it, can exist within the borders” (Agote 2006: 47). Nationalism is especially collective sentiment and it is related discourse to become a historical force which refers to a state as an existing structure or potential object of engagement (Mark 2003: 6). Mark (2003: 32) also continued arguing that “nationalism demarcated against foreign enemies was reinforced by depriving rights, property, or residency to heretical traitors from within, aggravating the international tensions associated with the rise of nation-states”. One of the main goals of nationalist ideology is to unite people in their struggle for self-determination (Pinkney 1976: 16). “Like ethnicity, nationalism

527 adheres to the belief that community members are linked by presumed ancestral bonds” (Barreto 2009: 14). The 9/11, 2001 could never be forgotten. It was not only the attack on the USA. It was on all the nations. While nationalism has positive sides to nationalists by strengthening its nations, at the same time it encourages patriotism. Nationalism becomes stronger and diverse if it is used properly through economy, or politics. Nationalism motivates people to work hard for what they value and this makes people unite as one to accomplish this. There are various types of nationalism such as: cultural nationalism, economic nationalism, religious nationalism, political nationalism, educational nationalism, ethno nationalism, etc. Apart from the mentioned nationalisms, there are also other nationalisms, such as: Arab nationalism, Yugoslav nationalism, etc. The most important nationalism is cultural nationalism. Mondal (2003: 18) argued: Everything of value is associated with the cultural nationalists, whilst the political aim is dismissed with a short phrase; cultural nationalism is good and integral to “the community” whilst its political counterpart is exterior to it, almost superfluous, and is associated with “modernization” which in turn is characterized as “exogenous”, as opposed to the “indigenous” community.

Hsiau (2000: 14) also argued: The central concept of cultural nationalism is that the public life of the nation should express or be penetrated by its unique culture, however defined. When cultural nationalism, like political nationalism, claims an autonomous state, its goal is more than that. Whether it is stated or implied, the ultimate object of cultural nationalism is to create a “new man” by instilling a distinctive culture into those who are regarded as members of the nation.

Cultural nationalism usually holds that Black people throughout the world possess a distinct culture and that before Black liberation can be achieved in the

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528 United States, Black people must reassert their cultural heritage, which is fundamentally different from that of the larger society. Cultural nationalists maintain that a cultural revolution in the Black community is essential before Afro-Americans can command the unity necessary to revolt effectively against their oppressors (Pinkney 1976: 13). So the ideology of Black nationalism is widely spread among America’s Black community, and its effect has influenced those who do not consider themselves nationalists. Although nationalism was not an important force in the world before the eighteenth century. Consequently, regarding to the Black nationalism, besides individual and collective levels, recently it has been seen the increase of Black nationalist organizations at the local, state, national, and even the international levels. Regarding the disadvantages of nationalism, the phenomenon was commonly associated with the horrors of ethnic cleansing, a term that originated in the Balkans in the early 1990s. This gave ethno-nationalism a bad name and also meant that it tended to be linked with secession and the break-up of states, as well as with political mobilization leading to war. Ethno-nationalism also tended to be associated with minorities dissatisfied with their place in existing polity (Guelke 2010: 1). So racism became mixed with ethnic nationalism at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Motyl 2001: 435). “Ethnicity, for all its problems, provides a more fruitful basis for explaining key elements of the distinctive shape and character of nations and nationalisms” (Smith 2009: 18). Smith (2009: 34) went further by arguing that most nationalisms were driven by conflict. Nationalism can lead to feelings of superiority, racism, and instability. These feelings can cause conflicts among states. Nationalism should not be linked to the racism. If it is linked to the racism, there will be conflict among nations. There are more nations than states in the world. Any instability among nations can cause conflicts and a war.

RESULT OF THE STUDY    Many students and teachers were interviewed about pros and cons of nationalism. According to the interviews, the students and teachers stated that by learning nationalism they can easily judge the pros and cons of it. Nationalism is a good thing that enables and motivates the people to work and study for their countries they stated. The results of this study show that there have been different views respecting the term nationalism. It has been found out that the teachers and students have been quite comfortable and positive regarding the nationalism. People gain experience and knowledge through nationalism. By learning nationalism people can distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of nationalism they state. People who have backgrounds and life experiences of nationalism can see problems and find solutions to it from a variety of perspectives.

DISCUSSION OF THE RESULT  It is clearly seen that people discuss and talk about nationalism everywhere. The research shows that the young generation is interested in nationalism. People, especially new generation, have to be taught the good sides of nationalism. During the research and interviews, it was found out that students and teachers are aware of the importance of nationalism. For the future stability and peace, each state should provide people with information about nationalism and should teach them the postive sides of nationalism. When people are aware of the positive nationalism, they can love and be proud of their countries. When they love their countries, they can work and die for the sake of their countries.

CONCLUSIONS    Nationalism is considered as a good thing. It

Erbaş  motivates and encourages people to work and act for their countries. Of course people should avoid ethnicity and racism. Nationalism gives people a sense of pride, and also the purpose of living for their own countries. Without a pride, love or a care about ones’ country, the country cannot have much development and progress. Even in a simple competition if there is no nationalism, the team can hardly have a success. Apart from it, it also enables democracy to work. Nationalism keeps people and nations safe, although it keeps people isolated and strange to the rest of the world, but the people feel safe. It gives the soldiers strength to fight for their countries, and gives young generation reasons to become soldiers. It cannot be denied the reality that governments do not serve the people, but the people serve the governments. Nationalism makes people work for their governments. There are conflicts in some countries and people are killed by the dictators. The nationalism makes people be against the dictators. On the other hand, some nationalist parties are trying to ban things from other cultures. In some countries, other nations are deported from those countries. It can be stated that these are some examples of nationalist. Many nationalists do not want to let people practice what they used to do before. Most nationalists are against foreign cultures in their own countries. In these situations, conflicts cannot be avoided among those nations. In order to live peacefully and comfortably, people have to respect other nations and their acts, and then there will not be any conflicts and problems among nations.

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Bio  İsa Erbaş, Ph.D. candidate, Faculty of Political Science and International Relations, European University of Tirana; research fields: international relations, nationalism, foreign policy.