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The fragmented theories of nationalism and the new concept of defragmentation By: Saed Kakei, Ph.D. Student, Theories of Ethnicity and Nationalism Professor Dustin Berna, Ph.D. Nova Southeastern University Department of Conflict Analysis & Resolution PhD Program June 20, 2012

The fragmented theories of nationalism and the new concept of defragmentation

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Introduction During the last two hundred years that followed the fall of the Bastille in 1789 and ended with the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989, two sociopolitical phenomena have profoundly altered the nature of human actions like never before in history. Each of these two phenomenacommonly referred to as the principles of national self-determination and sovereigntyis correspondingly occupying one side of a political coin generally known as nationalism with which a human populations claim to a territorial ownership is fundamentally valued. Yet, to provide a thorough understanding of nationalism and its impacts on our contemporary institutions, this paper begins with descriptive differences and the similarities between the doctrines of national self-determination and sovereignty on the one hand, and their sequential repelling which formulates the sentimental sense of nationalism on the other hand. Then, a comparative analysis of some of the predominant definitions of nationalism will be provided to determine why nationalism, politically and sentimentally, does not have a comprehensive definition as of yet. The final section of this paper argues that the modernist concepts of fragmentation and fusion are amongst the significant causes of promoting nationalism. Therefore, a preliminary concept of Defragmentalism based on the scientific elements of critical theory will be suggested to solve and reconcile conflicts stemming from nationalism.

The principles of national self-determination and sovereignty Before discussing the differences and the similarities between the doctrines of national selfdetermination and sovereignty, there is a need to explain the meaning of the word national as part of the self-determination phrase.

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Just as nationalism has yet to be comprehensively theorized, self-determination, as a modern political principle, is still lacking a theory of its own.1 If any, this can be argued among other political reasons, against the vagueness of international law due to its lack of a generally competent judiciary, and a powerful executive effect (Janis and Noyes, 2006, p. 1). Also, it has to be noted that the key normative feature of many international disputes is the tension between peoples right to national self-determination, the norms of territorial integrity indoctrinated by rules of sovereignty, and foreign intervention. According to the international normative theory, there are generally two kinds of international norms. One is designed to foster order and stability in the system, and the other is concerning justice. As one international law scholar explains, norms are standards of behavior defined in terms of rights and obligations (Krasner, 1982, p. 86). These norms of behavior may or may not be embodied in hard law or soft law. In some cases, the political understanding of a norm is different from the legal principle. For example, while the UN Charter, in Article 1, paragraph 2, states that one of the central purposes of the UN is: To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples (Janis and Noyes, 2006, p. 881), it does not clearly specifies however who these peoples are. This ambiguity has created two inconsistent interpretations of peoples throughout the academic discussions. For instance, while Lea Brilmayer asserts that: Ethnicity primarily identifies the people making the disputed territorial claim (Brilmayer, 1991, p. 178), Vita Gudeleviciute (2005) finds that present international law does not recognize ethnic and other minorities as separate peoples. The latter author adds that in cases where people lack representation by a sovereign state, the unrepresented become a separate people.
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Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan at the University of Rochester have recently developed a macro theory of human motivation and personality termed as Self-determination theory (SDT) which has been elaborated and refined as the theory of motivation which is mostly applicable to clinical and psychology related social sciences. For more information on this subject, please visit the SDT website at: http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/

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Needless to say more on this, Andrew Hurrell (2007) notes that national self-determination is a political ideology asserting that the nation can be distinguished from the state, that nations and states should be coextensive in their boundaries, that every nation should have a state corresponding to it, and that any state that does not express a nation or national idea is potentially illegitimate (2007, pp. 125). He goes on to note that: NSD can also be seen as an international political norm which confers political and moral rights on national groups or on those speaking in their name and which encourages and legitimizes demands for the redrawing of state boundaries (2007, pp. 126). It is this essence that motivates mostly involuntary members of a distinct people or unrepresented nation to conceptualize their political goal for a legitimate national identity in the form of an ideological nationalism. This formula or phenomenon is often defined in terms of common historical origin, ethnicity, and/or cultural ties. To imbalance and ultimately discredit the right of the disenfranchised people to selfdetermination, a second phenomenon plays an equal critical role in the development of nationalism. Often referred to as civic-nationalism, this phenomenon is an approach taking by previously colonized enfranchised members of a nation-state concerning the unity of their polity with which their newly constructed statehood identity is preserved or expanded to exercise complete authority over domestic and international affairs (Miscevic, 2010, p.1). In other words, they are justifying the violation of their disenfranchised peoples right to self-determination according to the UN Charter, Article 2, paragraph 4, stating that: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state (Janis and Noyes, 2006, p. 882) The territorial integrity or political independence of any state often correlated with the international principle of sovereignty of states designed to protect not only the identity of a nation-

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state, but also to protect the vital economic interests of the colonial powers and their contemporary successors. Consequently, nationalism is regarded by the disenfranchised people as a crucial sociopolitical sentiment to achieve and sustain a form of self-determination recognized as a legitimate national identity. This national identity may include systems such as cultural rights, autonomy, federated, confederated or even an absolute secession. On the other hand, there is the politically constructed nationalism used by the enfranchised people as a legitimate philosophy to strengthen their state sovereignty by suppressing the national identity demands of their disenfranchised population. This type of nationalism which it may be termed as quasinationalism has many commonalities with patriotism and assimilation. Ironically, while the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings stipulate that there is no contradiction between the principles of national self-determination and territorial sovereignty of states, predominantly western realist theorists argue otherwise. For example, Pavkovic with Radan (2007) provide that the realist theory of international relations stipulates that territorial sovereignty is more important than national selfdetermination. This theory was translated into a pivotal foreign policy pursued by the major powers during the Cold War era. In fact, it has been adopted by the neorealist theorists and politicians alike. For example, under the pretext of regional conflict, the United States government not only has been coercing the Kurds in Iraq not to secede and declare their long overdue state of Kurdistan, but also helping the Turkish government to deny the Kurds their the most basic selfdetermination form to be expressed as recognized cultural rights. The least outcome of such a coercive foreign policy is the obvious domestic entrenchments of both the disenfranchised and the enfranchised nationalists creating the ideal ground for enduring ethnic and well as cultural conflicts. Internationally, however, it will reinforce the realists notion

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of anarchy in which international solidarity not only is seen as polarized but also fragmented where clusters of extreme nationalists do not hesitate to perpetrate terror on the one hand and acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide on the other hand. To clarify this point, the existing definitions of nationalism need to be deconstructed first to so that their fragmented concepts are underlined for the ultimate defragmentation.

Comparative analysis of theories of nationalism Generally, nationalism has three separate interpretations. The first one is known as the primordialist perspective that is based on the evolutionary theory. Among the few universalist theories of nationalism, the primordialist theorists assume that group identities do exist in all societies based on blood, race, language, religion, region, and etc. According to Clifford Geertz (1973), while group identities are ineffable, they are also coercive ties resulting from a long process of crystallization. In other words, ethnic identity is deeply rooted in the historical experience of human beings. Geertz elaborates this primordialist position providing three major concepts for his theory. These concepts state that: primordial identities are natural or given; that they are ineffable, that is, cannot be explained or analysed by referring to social interaction, but are coercive; and, that they essentially deal with sentiments or affections. These Greertzian concepts seem to exclude the possibility of sociological analysis which examines the origins, changes and dissolutions of ethnic groups, especially in light of the more modern processes of fusion of ethnic groups through intermarriage and sociopolitical assimilation. According to Josep R. Llobera (1999), most of the issues associated with the primordialist interpretations of nationalism disappear if nationalism is understood in a more malleable, less biologically-determined, way (Llobera, 1999, p. 4). He furthers that the sociobiological methodology begins with the assumption that nationalism is the outcome of the extension of kin

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selection to a wider sphere of individuals who are defined in terms of putative or common descent and that this methodology insists that nationalism combines both rational and irrational elements that is a primitive mind with modern techniques (1999, p.7). From a primordialist perspective, nationalism is an expression for diverse realities which include the assertion of national identity, national pride and a love of country. It can also become a xenophobic obsession to attain these realities by use of force, especially when in-group ethnocentrism builds up towards the out-group agitations. The second interpretation of nationalism to some extent comes from the Instrumentalist perspective. Theories belonging to this interpretation are essentially referring to ethnicities rather than nations. However, some of their findings are often broadly encompass both ethnies and nations. Unlike the primordialist theories of nationalism which predominantly consider ethnic groups as the grand base of nationalism that has a deep history, instrumentalists believe otherwise. Although they regard ethnic identity as flexible and variable, instrumentalists assume that ethnicity is the result of economic and sociopolitical processes during which an ethnic groups content and boundaries change according to the given circumstances. Also, unlike the primordialists who consider individuals as extensions of kinship holding the ethnic group together, instrumentalists contend this arguing that individuals not only they are not assigned permanently to an ethnic group, but they can be members of more than one at the same time. To this effect, Llobera asserts that some instrumentalists claim that ethnic membership is simply a ploy to promote economic interests, and that individuals are ready to change group membership if that suits their sense of security or their economic interests (1999, p.8). It is worth mentioning that some instrumentalist authors such as Michael Banton (1983) and Michael Hechter (1988) pay significant attentions to the role played by individual inclinations in ethnic affiliation. Both do base their arguments on two

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assumptions: one is that individuals act to maximize their personal gains and benefits; and, their second assumption stipulates that current actions confine future choices. The third yet most common interpretation of nationalism is that of the modernist perspective which has a variety of typologies each reflecting one or multiple guises. However, for all intents and purposes of this paper, only three major types of theories will be covered and they include theories stemming from socio-cultural, economics, and socio-political backgrounds. But, before going further, it has to be emphasized in general terms that almost all modernist theories of nationalism maintain that nationalism has emerged as a consequence for the gradual transition of the agrarian social communities into modern societies. Most of these theories, as mentioned here, focus specifically on the expansion of industrialization highlighting conditions or factors such as economics, social, political, and cultural functionalities related to it, as the primary cause for the progress of nationalism. Other theorists like John Armstrong and Anthony D. Smith contend that nationalism was and still is a sentiment held by pre-industrialized nations and that there is continuity between the old and the modern nations. From the socio-communication perspective, Karl Deutschs pioneering study of Nationalism and Social Communication (1953; 1969) emphasizes the centrality of communication in the making of national communities. Deutsch explains that the functional definition of nationality consists in the ability to communicate effectively, and over a wider range of subjects, with members of one large groups more than with outsiders (Deutsch, 1969, p. 97). Deutschs view point echoes loudly in Benedict Andersons Imagined Communities (2006). Among other things, Anderson pays significant attentions to the issue of social communication. He defines the nation in its early modern period as an imagined political community and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign (Anderson, 2006, p. 6). His argument about the origins of

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nationalism led him to focus on the tremendous impact of print capitalism. Anderson asserts that "what, in a positive sense, made the new communities imaginable was a half-fortuitous, but explosive, interaction between a system of production and productive relations (capitalism), a technology of communications (print), and the fatality of human linguistic diversity" (2006, pp. 423). He concludes his argument saying that the convergence of capitalism and print technology on the fatal diversity of human language created the possibility of a new form of imagined community, which in its basic morphology set the stage for the modern nation (2006, p. 46). However, neither Deutsch nor Anderson was able to provide us with a comprehensive understanding of nationalism. Although communication is considered as one of the significant factors of human interactions, it is by no means has anything to do with how the members of a community feel about their collective identity. From the modernist economic perspective, Michael Hechters Internal Colonialism (1975) provides us with his theory of cultural division of labour existing between the core and the periphery. Hechter argues that the United Kingdom (UK), as a former colonizer, has developed a system of stratification by means of which the dominant group at the core was in a position to monopolize social positions, which had high prestige in the society, while the members of the peripheral cultures were assigned social roles which were considered inferior (Llobera, 1999, p. 14). The more industrialization advanced in its uneven way, the deeper differences became more emphasized, thereby leading the way for the emergence of ethno-nationalism as an apparent response to a situation of dependence and exploitation. Although Hechter has amended his theory several times, it was obvious from the start that it was overwhelmed with conspicuous anomalies. Anthony D. Smith believes that Hechters theory is still "flawed by its reductionist assumptions

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that cultural cleavages and ethnic sentiments can be wholly derived from purely economic and spatial characteristics" (Smith, 1983, p. XVI). At this time, Ernst Gellner theory of nationalism came to light by the 1983 publication of his seminal work known as Nations and Nationalism. From the start of the first page of his book, Gellner begins defining nationalism as primarily a political principle, which holds that the
political and the national unit should be congruent (Gellner, 1994, p. 1). From thereon,

he maintains that nationalism is the inescapable consequence of an industrial society which requires a mobile division of labour (1994, p. 34). In such a situation, Gellner tells his readers that an individual becomes a nationalist not out of voluntary acceptance of shared values, but because of the structural requirements of modern industrialized societies. Consequently, the structural requirements become social conditions enforced through high cultural social relations, media and the public discourse, and other administrative requirements. In other words, Gellners essential concept insists that nations are and should be invented. As provided earlier, however, Anthony D. Smith does not deny the modern character of nations and nationalism, but he remarks that "we find in premodern eras, even in the ancient world, striking parallels to the modern idea of national identity [...] and we find movements that appear to resemble modern nationalism" (Smith, 1986, p. 11). Last, but not least, from the modernist socio-political perspective, John Breuilly and Anthony Giddens are two prominent authors focusing on role of the modern state in spreading nationalism. In his Nationalism and the State (1993), Breuilly defines nationalism as reference to political movements seeking or exercising state power and justifying such actions with nationalist arguments (Breuilly, 1993, p. 3). However, while he accepts the existence of nations and national sentiments in medieval Europe, he denies the existence of nationalism in pre-industrial period.

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Like the previously discussed modernists here, Breuilly confines nationalism to the modern era and considers it as an effect of the modern states progression within the new international system. As for Giddens, he defines nationalism in the first of the two volumes of his A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (1981; 1985) as "the existence of symbols and beliefs which are either propagated by elite groups, or held by many of the members of regional, ethnic, or linguistic categories of a population and which imply a community between them" (Giddens, 1981, pp. 19091). From Giddens perspective, nationalism is associated with class domination in which the irregular development of capitalism heavily impacts the "origins of oppositional nationalism" (1985, p. 220). From the above summary of the modernist theories, it seems that, in general terms, nationalism develops in societies associated with the industrialization capable of self-sustaining a society with a central authority proficient to maintaining order and unity with a centralized language(s) understood by a community of people (Conversi, 2000, p. 102). However, the assumption that nations and nationalism emerge because of the irregular development of industrialism cannot be established as a general proposition for two reasons. Frist, as Smith (1986) asserts, nations precede nationalism. Second, the functional economic interpretations of nationalism as claimed by Hechter (1975) and Gellner (1983) cannot be accepted as solid concepts; and, therefore, they lack the needed generality for theory of nationalism.

Defragmenting the fragmented theories of nationalism The comparative analysis of definitions of nationalism conducted above indicates a great deal of fragmented knowledge about nations and nationalism. Each theorist has put forth a concept fitting the guise which he or she is influenced by. The simplifications of the universalist theories based on evolutionary perspectives seem to exclude the sociological analysis needed to examine

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the origins, changes, and dissolutions of ethnic groups, especially in light of modern processes of ethnicities fusions through intermarriage and sociopolitical assimilation. The instrumentalist interpretations are not adequate to deal with issues related to nations and nationalism. As for the modernist interpretations of nationalism, they are mostly socio-communicational generalities, narrow economically driven functionalist theories, or broadly sociopolitical concepts trying to make sense of nationalism. As a result, one might ask: So, what should we do about them? A simple postmodernist answer would be to have them all be deconstructed. Well, despite all the positive promises of postmodernism, its deconstruction methodology offer no valid answer for the extensive fragmentation of knowledge on nationalism. There exist more than five hundred textbooks and thousands of scholarly constructed texts attempting to theorise nationalism, yet, as argued in this paper, none has been recognized as a comprehensive theory of nationalism. Paradoxically, within this mess of fragmentation, there are at least two forms of misconceptions regarding the nature of nationalism: an awakened beauty on the one hand, and a blood-shedding beast on the other. Hypothetically, each one of these misconceptions can be viewed as an unstable or Not Responding software application containing multiple files with various sizes on a computer system. In such a scenario, the first thing we need to do would be to close the application and re-run it later. If the problem persists, we assume that the application requires a critical attention. Then, we run a diagnostic application on the computer to figure out the problem. Sure enough, if there are no major security issues and system vulnerabilities, our computer prompts us to defragment the fragmented drive that hosts virtually all of our files and applications. Fragmentation can occur when we need to store a very big file to the empty spaces on a computer drive. It can also occur when we update an older file with more information that accede

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the space on the disk which the older file already occupies. Therefore, to process our command as expected, the file system within the operating system quickly calculates our new information against the available spaces on the disk. During this very fast process; and, if the intended data for storing does not accede the overall empty spaces, then the file system breaks our data into smaller chunks known as clusters to accommodate our data. The breaking of the data is called fragmentation. To put this positivist reality into a humanistic perspective, we need to contemplate modernism to be similar to that of the file system. As humans, everything we do produces information relative to the quality (good or bad) and the quantity (large/small) of any previous information. Once validated by respected authorities, the final information becomes knowledge available for others to access. This process has been the norm ever since the beginning of the enlightenment period. As we entered the modern era, the amount of knowledge readily available for our operating system, that is to say our brains, to process was astronomical in volume. Undoubtedly, because of the very fast paced production of knowledge associated with the industrialization and the rapid urbanization of societies, modernism, as our filing system, was and still is overloaded with tasks of accommodating knowledge so fast that it left with no options but to fragment any new added knowledge, especially with the onset of the twentieth century. This fragmentation not only hastened the spread of nationalism all over the world, but also helped the realiststhose with an international relations paradigmto argue for proving that violence, ethnocentrism, and competition are features of the human natural, thus the need for finding actual responses to these realities seriously required.

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Needless to say more, our modern history witnessed catastrophic devastations of at least two major world wars associated with sentiments of nationalism in the twentieth century. More recently, intrastate conflicts around the world point to the direction where the instability is closely associated with nationalism. This leads us to define nationalism as an aggressive offensive/defensive political philosophy that intends to attain and maintain the national interests of the politically active nations in both state and non-state formations. Therefore, we have an urgent need to resolve the instability caused by nationalism. To do this, we may need to start with knowledge defragmentation, that is, the process of rearranging the scattered knowledge on nationalism through a harmonious fusion. In the process, clusters of the so-called civicnationalism should clearly be separated from other juxtaposed variations such as ethnicnationalism, ultra-nationalism, and pan-nationalism simply because of civic-nationalisms strong incompatibility issues with nationalism. In fact, similar to religious-nationalism, civicnationalism has more commonalities with patriotism and assimilation than it does with the other kinship based forms of nationalism. These anomalies may thoroughly be analyzed in a different paper. However, for the purpose of this paper, defragmentation needs to be performed only for kinship based nationalism. In other words, nationalism needs to be directly connected to the term nation2 which is bond by norms of kinship, language, and a shared history linked to a particular territorial area.

Conclusion This paper has argued that nationalism is the results of two sociopolitical phenomena commonly referred to as the principles of national self-determination and sovereignty. As
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According to Douglas Harpers online etymology dictionary (2012), the term nation came to English from the Old French word nacion, which in turn originated from the Latin term nationem (nom. natio) meaning a nation, race, or stock.

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discussed in details, these phenomena are associated with modernism. The comparative analysis of the three variable interpretations of nationalism (e.g. the primordialist perspective, the instrumentalist perspective, and the modernist perspective) provided that the existing theories of nationalism are inconclusive. One possible cause for this inconclusiveness is fragmented knowledge on nationalism. Therefore, based on available positivist knowledge, defragmentation may be the answer not only to rearrange the scattered knowledge on nationalism through a harmonious fusion, but to solve the fragmented kinship base nationalism which it has been proving to be a primary source for instability around the world.

Reference:
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities. London: New Left Books. Armstrong, J. (1982). Nations before nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Banton, M. (1983). Racial and ethnic competition. Breuilly, J. (1982, 1993). Nationalism and the State. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Brilmayer, L. (1991). Secession and self-determination: A territorial interpretation. Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 2434. Retrieved on June 01, 2012 from: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/2434 Deutsch, K. (1969). Nationalism and social communication. New York: MIT Press.

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Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Free Press. Gellner, E. (1994). Nations and nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Giddens, A. (1981). A contemporary critique of historical materialism. London: Macmillan. Giddens, A. (1985). The Nation-state and violence. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hechter, M. (1975). Internal colonialism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hechter, M. (1980). Rational choice theory and the study of ethnic and race relations. In REX, J.; Hechter, M. and Brustein, W. (1980). Regional modes of production and patterns of state formation in Europe. American Journal of Sociology (85). P.p. 1061-1094. Hurrell, A. (2007). On global order: Power, values, and the constitution of international society. New York: Oxford University Press. International Court of Justice (1986). Case concerning the Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Mali). Retrieved on June 01, 2012 from: http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/69/6447.pdf. Janis, M. W. and Noyes, J. E. (2006). International law: Cases and commentary. St. Paul: Thomson/West. Krasner, S. (1982). Structural causes and regime consequences: Regimes as intervening variables. International Organization 36 (2): 185-205. Llobera, J.R. (1999). The God of Modernity. The Development of Nationalism in Western Europe. Oxford: Berg. Miscevic, N. (2010). Nationalism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved on June 01, 2012 from: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/nationalism. Pavkovic, A. with Radan, P. (2007). Creating new states: Theory and practice of secession. Aldershot: Ashgate. Smith, A.D. (1983). Theories of nationalism. London: Duckworth. Smith, A.D. (1986). The ethnic origin of nations. Oxford: Blackwell. UN (1966, 1976). International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Retrieved on June 01, 2012 from http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cescr.htm Gudeleviciute, V. (2005). Does the principle of self-determination prevail over the principle of territorial integrity? International Journal of Baltic Law, (2), 4874.