Contextualising nationalism

Abstract

This paper seeks to relate the scholarly analysis of nationalism – and of the ways in which nation-states relate to minorities and migrants – with the actual socio-political context within which such analysis takes place. Looking back into the theories of nationalism as they have developed since World War II, the focus of nationalism theorists has shifted from the effort to explain why nations emerged and when they emerged, looking at the wider processes of industrialisation and print capitalism; to the effort to analyse nationalism from the ground up through the lived experiences of citizens; to, more recently, the effort to explain why and how nationalism persists and whether and how it evolves in more plural or more exclusionary ways. I am arguing in this paper that it is important to adopt a self-reflexive approach so as not only to link our understanding of nations and nationalism in their contemporary socio-economic and political context, but that we also need to adopt such self-reflexivity in relation to our own work and ask: why do we focus on a particular perspective or evolution? How does this relate to our wider context and positionality as scholars? In this paper, I am proposing a periodisation of nationalism studies from the post-WW II period to this day, arguing that the focus of nationalism theories was guided interactively by the wider socio-economic developments of each period. I conclude with a critical reflection on nationalism in a (post-)pandemic world.