Revision:Ernest Gellner's (Modernist) Theory of Nationalism

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Gellner defines nationalism as "a political principle which holds that that political and the national unit should be congruent". It is a fundamentally new feature of modern life since states in previous times were not organised on nationalist lines.

For Gellner, there are three stages to human history:

• The hunter-gatherer
• The agro-literate
• The industrial

Nationalism appears in the transition from the agro-literate to the industrial stage of human history. In the second stage, there is no incentive for the ruling classes to impose cultural homogeneity on the masses - indeed, they benefit from diversity as it means that there will be no challenge to their power.

In industrial societies, "a high culture pervades the whole of society, defines it, and needs to be sustained by the polity". In industrial society, the changing nature of work demands cultural homogeneity. There is a need for impersonal, context-free communication.

Furthermore, industrial society depends on perpetual growth in order to satisfy needs. Perpetual growth can only be achieved by perennial shifts in the occupational structure. The high level of technical skill required means that many posts must be filled meritocratically. This necessitates a kind of egalitarianism. It also necessitates general training before specialised training, in order to allow shifts in occupation.

Thus, we see an important development in education. Education now defines the status of the individual, whereas in agro-literate societies kinship status was the defining factor.

The state takes this need for education, and fuses the state and culture together. There is a need to compete for overlapping cultural catchment areas, and nationalism is the only way of competing effectively for these areas.

Criticism

• Too functionalist
• Misreads the relationship between nationalism and industrialisation
• Gellner's theory can not account for resurgence of nationalism in post-industrial societies
• Gellner's theory can not explain the passions generated by nationalism
• The processes causing nationalism are too general

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