Nationalism is one of the most powerful forces in the modern world, yet it is surprisingly little studied and only imperfectly understood, either by its adherents or its opponents. Its irruption into the modern world is often explained as a resurgence of primitive, atavistic instincts, or as a delusion fostered by a few theoreticians, politicians or propagandists.

The present volume interprets nationalism in terms of its social roots, which it locates in industrial social organization. A society that aims for affluence and economic growth, Professor Gellner argues, depends on innovation, occupational mobility, mass media, universal literacy, and education in a shared, standard idiom. Taken together these transform the relationship between culture and the state. The functioning of the society depends on an all-embracing educational system, tied to one culture and protected by a state identified with that culture. The principle one state, one culture makes itself felt, and political units which do not conform to it feel the strain in the form of nationalist activity. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Table of Contents

About the Authors vii

About this Edition viii

Editor's Preface to the First Edition R. I. Moore, Founding Editor ix

Acknowledgements for the First Edition xi

Introduction John Breuilly xiii

1 Definitions 1

State and Nation 3

The Nation 5

2 Culture in Agrarian Society 8

Power and Culture in the Agro-literate Polity 9

Culture 11

The State in Agrarian Society 13

The Varieties of Agrarian Rulers 14

3 Industrial Society 19

The Society of Perpetual Growth 23

Social Genetics 29

The Age of Universal High Culture 34

4 The Transition to an Age of Nationalism 38

A Note on the Weakness of Nationalism 42

Wild and Garden Cultures 48

5 What is a Nation? 52

The Course of True Nationalism Never did Run Smooth 57

6 Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society 62

Obstacles to Entropy 63

Fissures and Barriers 72

A Diversity of Focus 73

7 A Typology of Nationalisms 85

The Varieties of Nationalist Experience 94

Diaspora Nationalism 98

8 The Future of Nationalism 106

Industrial Culture - One or Many? 110

9 Nationalism and Ideology 118

Who is for Nuremberg? 125

One Nation, One State 128

10 Conclusion 131

What is not being Said 131

Summary 133

British philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist, self-described Enlightenment rationalist fundamentalist, born to Czech parents in Paris and raised in Prague, where he lived the last few years of his life, and died in 1995. He received a very thorough training in the Wittgensteinian "linguistic" or "ordinary language" philosophy fashionable in Britain (and more particularly Oxford) in the '50s, and found himself quite unable to believe it, so he ran away to become an anthropologist, and studied the Berbers because a mountaineering group at the London School of Economics organized a trip to the Atlas. His first book, Words and Things (1959; preface by Russell, to whom he dedicated his second book) combined a crushing philosophical critique of linguistic philosophy with a sociological analysis of "the narodniks of North Oxford", "an intelligentsia without ideas." It was at once a succès de scandale (probably the only kind Gellner wanted, frankly) and the first real demonstration of his style: a devastating, hilarious combination of learning and intellectual seriousness with verbal play and irreverence, in particular an almost uncanny talent for finding apt, mocking names for things and ideas.