Rethinking Nationalism and Ethnicity

Abstract

Rethinking Nationalism and Ethnicity: The Struggle for Meaning and Order in Europe. HANS-RUDOLF WICKER, ed. Oxford: Berg, 1997; 332 pp. Reviewed by DAVID BERIUSS University of New Orleans It is striking to consider that only thirty or forty years ago, at the height of decolonization and the cold war, European seemed to present stable frameworks and models for the nations of the third world. While American social scientists and policy makers worried about ethnicity and race, Europeans considered that class presented the only real social fault line worthy of analysis. Along with the U.S., the formerly colonized world was plagued with ethnic conflicts, but these were often understood to be a kind of pre-modern survival, something that would be swept away by modernization and development. Today many European seem - and some really are - fragile structures subject to imminent break-up. In the last decade social scientists and policy makers in Europe have tried to adjust their thinking to take into account the social structures and cultural processes that account for this fragility. Can old theories, especially those that have long been used to bolster class analyses, be adapted to these new contexts? Are concepts used in American political debate, such as affirmative action or multiculturalism, useful in European societies? Do debates over national or ethnic identity reflect new political stakes or do they reflect capital's evolving capacity to hide the real stakes from citizens and scholars alike? The essays in this volume seek to develop concepts and analytical frameworks that can be useful in answering these questions. Most of the authors whose work is included here are Europeans themselves and the collection is marked by an interesting tension between analysis and advocacy, reflecting an underlying unease with the perceived challenge posed to the nation-state by the irruption of ethnicity. This point is made rather well by Hans-Rudolf Wicker in his provocative introductory essay. Wicker argues that postmodern theorizing about society amounts to a tacit endorsement of flexible multinational capitalism. Such theorizing denies legitimacy to totalizing concepts such as the nation. Instead, according to Wicker, postmodern thinking sees flexibility, reflexivity, and negotiation as characteristic of most human activities. This view, he believes, reflects a transformation in the relationship between capitalism, the state, and individuals. While the modernist nation-state historically tempered capitalism by insisting on the equality of citi zens as individuals, postmodern transnational capitalism requires flexibility and growing inequality. Thus, theory follows and endorses culture, suggesting that even the most self-conscious of social scientists is simply the tool of hegemonic forces. Of course, Wicker's argument can be disputed on many points, including his reading of the relationship between capitalism and European states. Yet his introduction raises two problems that are central for most of the authors in this collection. First, what sorts of structures and ideologies can European states deploy if they are to continue to offer effective policies protecting citizens from the vagaries of multinational capitalism? Second, what is the place (and meaning) of concepts such as diversity, regionalism, and multiculturalism in societies in which both public policy and social science thinking have historically been oriented to social class? These essays take three general approaches to sorting out these questions. First, several authors focus on the applicability of various social theorists' work to questions of nationalism and ethnicity in contemporary Europe. Kurt Imhof claims that sociologists have been blind-sided by the resurgence of ethnicity and nationalism in Europe and suggests that this is due to a faulty reading of Max Weber. He argues that theorists ought to abandon evolutionary perspectives that consider ethnicity to be misplaced primitive irrationality in modern societies. …