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Classes, Nations and Races. Karl Marx's and Frederick Engels's Reflection on Nationalism

100%
Jaskulowski K.
Sprawy Narodowościowe
|
2004
|
issue 24-25
69-89
EN
The aim of this article is to analyse an approach of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to nationalism and related phenomena like nation-state, national movements, ethnicity and race. These two theoreticians are usually regarded founding-fathers of social sciences and their ideas influenced many contemporary thinkers. In the field of nationalism studies there is a group of scholars who attempt to develop Marxist theory of nationalism. Marxism had also enormous impact on politics in many countries in the 20th century. The communists governments had to deal with nationalism which was their main ideological rival. It is argued in the article that the writings of Marx and Engels did not provide any systematic and comprehensive approach to nationalism. There were various and contradictory trends in their writings on nationalism. It is usually said that Marx and Engels had no understanding of the significance of nationalism, and underestimated its strength. Their central thesis was that the essential division in society was not horizontal but vertical, i.e. not between nations but between classes. However, although they were usually critical of nationalist ideas, they were not immune to nationalism. Frequently, they took the nation for granted or exaggerated its significance in their analysis. Moreover, the nation was sometimes defined in biological terms. Occasionally, they spoke of different races whose capacities were determined by their anatomical features and claimed that some races were superior over the others.
2
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CONSUMING NATIONAL TERRITORY. IDENTITY, TERRITORY AND POPULAR CULTURE

100%
Jaskulowski K.
Sprawy Narodowościowe
|
2007
|
issue 31
287-294
EN
The aim of the article is to analyze the role of images of territory in popular culture in reproducing national identity. The author point of departure is a critique of conviction that nations exists is a real and solid social beings which have a similar ontological status as physical objects. In other words, he criticises acceptance of a nationalistic conviction that nations are durable social groups, which have clear borders and are capable of collective activity. It concerns so-called objectivist definitions of a nation, mentioning common elements in the form of language, customs, territory, and culture - as well as so-called subjectivist definitions emphasising the role of consciousness. The latter often treat consciousness as a derivative phenomenon in the face of objective factors in the form of language, customs, culture or territory. From constructivist perspective territory is not one of the attributes of nations or a factor which enables crystallising of national awareness. It is not a common territory which creates nationalism, but nationalism fabricates territory and subsequently maintains the conviction of its existence and weight. A national territory is an abstraction and the possibility of its imagining was brought by modernity. The capability to think in these kinds of abstract categories is not something natural, but the effect of social enginery and deep social transformations: a common education, military service, mass communication, the democratisation of political life and also the formation of mass culture, or speaking a more modern language and popular culture. The existence of a 'nation' as an imagined territorial community depends on the number of cultural symbols. They are very simple, easily comprehensible, ubiquitous, emotionally charged and present in everyday life. Thanks to them abstraction of national territory appears as a natural environment of a common citizen.
3
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EMILE DURKHEIM ABOUT THE NATION, PATRIOTISM AND NATIONALISM

100%
Jaskulowski K.
Lud
|
2005
|
vol. 89
51-69
EN
The article attempts to reconstruct the views of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) about the nation and nationalism and their influence on modern research. Durkheim did not create any cohesive and systematic theory of the nation. These problems were not the most important of his interests and have poor connection with the main line of his theory. Moreover, Durkheim seemed to associate modern societies with communities delimited by the boundaries of national states. However, Durkheim overestimated the uniformity of nations when he wrote about the national character. He also replicated national prejudices when he described Germany as an example of bad nationalism. The author of 'The Division of Labour in Society' was not the only one to underestimate the national phenomena and giving in to some nationalistic beliefs. This is a broader phenomenon, which needs to be explained. However, in Durkheim's works there are many views, which were developed later, such as the thesis about the historical evolution of nations, indication of the role of ethnic ties in the modern world, and particularly the emphasis placed on the significance of rituals and symbols for social integration, which became an inspiration for the study of national holidays. Durkheim's discussion of the division of labour and its relation to the social cohesion have been most fully developed in Ernest Gellner's theory of nationalism.
4
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NATIONALISM AS METONYMICAL THINKING

63%
Burszta W. J., Jaskulowski K.
Sprawy Narodowościowe
|
2005
|
issue 27
7-21
EN
The first part of the article concerns two well-known theories of nationalism, modernist theory and ethno-symbolic theory, connected with the names of Ernest Gellner and Anthony D. Smith. Discussing the specific features of the two approaches, the authors analyze the strong and weak points from the context of a third approach to nationalism, i.e. as a basic plane for the shaping of subjectivized human identity. A 'nationalist theory of nation' is a specific way of thinking about apparently natural ties linking social communities and their territory and state. The article shows how nationalist thinking uses metonyms and metaphors in order to create a mythical picture of a nation as a territorially-rooted community of values. Nationalism is attractive also because it allows a co-existence of metaphorical and metonymical figures which help intensify group identifications.
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