Cultural Nationalism, Elite Mobility and Nation-Building: Communitarian Politics in Modern Ireland

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show that, although generally ignored by scholars, cultural nationalism has been a significant ideological force that, promoting a distinctive communitarian vision of the nation, has regularly been adopted by a rising intelligentsia as a political option against the state. Taking Ireland as my case study, I first examine the three major cultural nationalist 'revivals' in order to delineate the distinctive character of cultural nationalism, the leadership role of the intelligentsia, and its recurring emergence in alternation with political nationalism. I go on to argue that the attraction of the intelligentsia to nationalism can be explained in terms of the patterns of recruitment practised by the British state in Ireland. I then identify an alternating cycle in which the communitarian goals of cultural nationalism periodically challenge the state-oriented objectives of political nationalism to provide a matrix of national development in opposition to the British state.