Political Science 561

Nationalism and Nation-Building

State University of New York at Albany
Spring 2011

Professor Cheng Chen Monday 5:45 – 8:35

Office: Milne Hall 214A Office Hours: Monday 4:35 – 5:35
Phone: 591-8724 E-mail: cchen@albany.edu

Course Description

This course is designed to cover different conceptualizations of “nation” and “nationalism”;

interpretations of historical and social developments associated with the building and
emergence of nations and nationalist movements, and strategies for locating the study of
nationalism in a more general theoretical framework. The course begins with discussions
over the essential characteristics of nation and nationalism and the relevance of the problem
of identity. It then provides a survey of major scholarly models and theories of nationalism,
such as instrumentalist, constructivist, and primordialist views of nationalism. The third part
of the course examines the theoretical and historical evolution of nationalism, nationalist
movements, and nation-building. Specifically, it explores nationalism’s encounters with
major political traditions such as liberalism, Leninism, and anti-colonialism, and the
consequences of these encounters. The fourth part of the course addresses some of the most
salient contemporary issues related to the national question, including the effects of
globalization and the resurgence of nationalism in the post-Cold War era. The course
concludes by situating the study of nationalism and nation-building in broader comparative
inquiries of social change. The objectives of this course are to familiarize the student with
both classical and recent scholarly debates regarding nationalism and nation-building, and to
help the student develop an appreciation for historically-grounded comparative theory-
building.

Course Requirements

Your grade in this course will be determined in the following manner:

Seminar participation 15%

Oral presentations 15%
Take-home midterm 30%
15-page literature review 40%

Class attendance and active, informed participation are mandatory. Students must complete
the assigned readings prior to the seminar meetings. The oral presentations require each
student to analyze and report on a number of assigned readings for a given week. There will
also be a take-home mid-term essay. In addition, students are required to write a 15-page
literature review on a set of relevant reading, but the scope must be finalized in consultation
with the instructor. The review paper is due in the last class on Monday, May 2. Late papers
will result in grade reductions.

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Readings

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)
Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)
Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New
Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Recommended:

Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of

Nations and Nationalism (London and New York: Routledge, 1998)

The above books are available at Mary Jane Books. The rest of the readings will be included
in a course pack available also at Mary Jane.

PART I: CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF NATIONALISM

January 24: Introduction

• Course syllabus

January 31: Nation and Nationalism

• “The Question of Definition,” in John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith, eds.

Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 15-46
• Anthony Smith, Nationalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), 5-20
• Ernst Haas, “Nationalism: An Instrumental Social Construction,” Millennium 22:3
(1993): 505-541
• Lowell W. Barrington, “’Nation’ and ‘nationalism’: The Misuse of Key Concepts in
Political Science,” PS: Political Science and Politics 30:4 (December 1997): 712-716

PART II: MODELS AND THEORIES OF NATIONALISM

February 7: Nationalism and Modernization I: The Developmental Perspective

• Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 5-30, 353-364
• Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1953), 60-80, 139-160
• Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1992), 1-26, 487-491

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February 14: Nationalism and Modernization II: The Cultural Perspective

• Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)
• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 1-46

February 28: Nationalism and Modernization III: The Political and Ideological Perspective

• John Breuilly, “The State and Nationalism,” in Montserrat Guibernau and John
Hutchinson, eds. Understanding Nationalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 32-52
• Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993),
255-293
• Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 14-45
• Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2000), 93-113

March 7: Challenges to the Modernist Paradigm

• Clifford Geertz, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil

Politics in the New States,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic
Books, 1973), 255-279
• John A. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1982), 3-11
• Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 28-
66
• Patha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 3-13

PART III: NATIONALISM AND NATION-BUILDING IN HISTORY

March 14: Liberalism and Nationalism I: Early Encounters

• Selections by G. Mazzini, J. S. Mill, and Lord Acton from Omar Dahbour and
Micheline R. Ishay, The Nationalism Reader (NJ: Humanities Press, 1995), 87-118
• Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1992), 44-87
• Anthony W. Marx, Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 3-32
• Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British
Liberal Thought (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 1-45

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March 21: Liberalism and Nationalism II: Recent Debates

• Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)

• Liah Greenfeld, “Liberal Nationalism (Review),” The American Political Science
Review 88:2 (June 1994): 456-457
• Ian S. Lustick, “Liberalism and Nationalism: Can They Be Joined?” Journal of
International Law and Politics 27:1 (Fall 1994)

March 28: Communism and Nationalism I: Theoretical Foundation

• Roman Szporluk, Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx versus Friedrich List
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 1-15
• Richard Lowenthal, “Nationalism and Communism,” Problems of Communism
(November-December, 1962)
• Walker Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 5-42

April 4: Communism and Nationalism II: Practice

• Terry Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest
Form of Imperialism,” in R. G. Suny and T. Martin, eds. A State of Nations (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), 67-90.
• Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State
Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53:2 (Summer 1994): 414-452
• Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996), 83-103

April 11: Anti-Colonialism and Nationalism

• Selections by Gandhi, V. I. Lenin, W. Wilson, and F. Fanon from Vincent P. Pecora,

ed., Nations and Identities: Classic Readings (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001),
207-235, 264-275
• Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-Assertion of Asian and
African People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), 3-21
• Mark R. Beissinger and Crawford Young, “Convergence to Crisis: Pre-Independence
State Legacies and Post-Independence State Breakdown in Africa and Eurasia,” in M.
R. Beissinger and C. Young, eds., Beyond State Crisis: Postcolonial Africa and Post-
Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson
Center Press, 2002), 19-50

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PART IV: NEW ISSUES OF NATIONALISM AND NATION-BUILDING

April 25: New Theories of Nationalism

• Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in

the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

May 2: New Waves of Nationalism

• Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1994), 1-4, 22-35
• Herbert Kitschelt, The Radical Right in Western Europe (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1995), 275-279
• Saul Newman, “Nationalism in Postindustrial Societies: Why States Still Matter,”
Comparative Politics 33:1 (October 2000): 21-40
• Anatol Lieven, “In the Mirror of Europe: The Perils of American Nationalism,”
Current History (March 2004): 99-106