Customer Reviews

Nationalism and Modernism

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This book by Anthony D. Smith, Professor of Ethnicity and Nationalism at the London School of Economics, is perhaps the best overview of the many theories of nationalism in one volume. As a sort of sequel to his first book, _Theories of Nationalism_, Smith summarizes each major theory and offers his critique. He spends a good amount of time on the seminal theories of Ernest Gellner and Elie Kedourie plus has significant sections on John Armstrong, Benedict Anderson, Michael Hechter, EJ Hobsbawm, Tom Nairn and many others, including himself. Each chapter is organized by theme, starting with the grand old men of sociology, Durkheim and Weber, moving through the modernists, primordalists, perennialists and ethno-symbolists before ending with the postmodernists. (If you've never heard of some of these distinctions before, Smith spells them out quite clearly and succintly in the conclusion.)

This book is thus valuable for all students of nationalism, even if you don't agree with Smith's critiques: his summaries alone make the book worthwhile.

There seems to be an almost infinite variety of approaches to the study of nations and nationalism. The book of Anthony Smith is a good trial to summarize and review, if not all, plenty of them. Because of that, I think it is worth reading it.(Content: 5 starts; readability: 3 stars)

Other general overviews (not so good as Smith's but pretty fine): "The Sociology of Nationalism", by David McCrone; in Spain, "Enciclopedia del Nacionalismo", Andrés de Blas Guerrero (Director).

Books that are nowadays "classic" or almost: "Imagined communities", by Benedict Anderson, "Nations and nationalism", by Ernst Gellner; "Nations and Nationalism since 1780", by Eric Hobsbawn, "The Invention of Tradition", edited by Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (all of them tend to be critic with nationalism).

Focused on a country or countries: Germany, "The nationalization of the masses", by George Mosse; France, "Peasants into Frenchmen ", by Eugen Weber; UK, "Britons. Forging the nation 1707-1837", by Linda Colley; Spain, "Mater Dolorosa. La idea de España en el siglo XIX", by José Alvarez Junco; England, France, Germany, Russia and USA, "Nationalism. Five roads to modernity", by Liah Greenfeld; Quebec, Catalonia, Scotland, "Nations against the State", Michael Keating; Basque country, "El bucle meláncolico" by Jon Juaristi.

Others: "Kindoms and communities in Western Europe 900-1300", by Susan Reynolds; "State and nation in Europe", by Hagen Schulze; "The God of modernity. The development of nationalism in Western Europe", by Josep R. Llobera; Hugh Seton-Watson, "Nations and states. An Enquiry into the origins of nations and the politics and nationalism".

And more and more...

This is a good book for someone who wants an overview of the various theories of nationalism over the last few decades. The book is chock full of summaries of the "biggies" in this field: Anderson, Armstrong, Horowitz, Geertz and so forth, along with critiques of each. This is a great book for the PhD student in Political Science or a related field getting ready for comps. However, there are very few examples in this book, and it's pretty dry. This book is only for those terribly interested in various theoretical models.

If you are only going to read one book on nationalism theory, this may be the one for you. Smith sets out the major theories of nationalism and examines them critically, while arguing for his own vision of "modern" nations deriving from "ancient" ethnic affiliations (ethnies). The one major fault of this book is that, like most of the literature on nationalism, Smith is better at defining what nationalism is not than what it actually is. His differentiation between "ancient" ethnies and "modern" nations is critical, but muddled; his assertion of a direct relationship between these two concepts is less flexible than the rich tapestry of contemporary nations deserves. Despite these problems, it is still very well-written and important book.