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Methodological Nationalism: Theory and History

Daniel Chernilo * Annual Conference of the International Association of Critical Realism Kings College, London, July 2008 Abstract This article seeks to contribute to furthering our understanding of what methodological nationalism actually is and offer some insights that point towards its possible overcoming. The critical side of its argument unravels the paradoxical constitution of the current debate on methodological nationalism; namely, the fact that methodological nationalism is simultaneously regarded as wholly negative and all-pervasive. I shall substantiate this by revisiting some of the most successful attempts at the conceptualisation of the nation-state that have sought to transcend methodological nationalism in five disciplines: sociology, nationalism studies, anthropology, social psychology and international relations. The positive side of the articles argument introduces a distinction between a theoretical and an historical form of methodological nationalism with the help of which it tries to address some of the problems most commonly found in the literature. Theoretically, methodological nationalism is associated with an explanatory reductionism as the rise and main features of the nation-state are used to explicate the rise and main features of modernity itself. Historically, it introduces the historical problem of its prevalence, that is, whether methodological nationalism a key if not the key feature of the history of the social sciences at large. Keywords Anthropology, International Relations, Methodological Nationalism, Nationalism Studies, Social Psychology, Social Theory, Sociology. Last revision: 20 June 2008. Word count: 10,750

Associate Professor of Sociology the University Alberto Hurtado in Santiago - Chile. Email: dchernil@uahurtado.cl.

The question of methodological nationalism has gained currency in contemporary social sciences over the past couple of decades. Although it was first identified as a problem in the early 1970s (Martins 1974), it was only with rise - and later decline of globalization theory that it became a salient issue in relation to studying the nation-states position in modernity (Beck 2000, Chernilo 2006). The critical aim of this piece is to argue that even though we have moved a long way in clarifying what we mean by and what is wrong with methodological nationalism, the debate has taken a paradoxical shape that has prevented its further delimitation and, more importantly, its transcendence. The positive aim of the article is the introduction of a distinction between a theoretical and a historical version of the argument on methodological nationalism that may help in the solution of some of the substantive problems being faced when trying to conceptualise the nation-state. But let me first of all state as clearly as possibly what I mean by methodological nationalism. At its simplest, methodological nationalism is found when the nation-state is treated as the natural and necessary representation of the modern society. A fuller definition would run as follows: the equation between the idea of society as social theorys key conceptual reference and the process of historical formation of the nation-state in modernity. The idea of society becomes the all-encompassing presupposition around which all modern social trends are being explicated; the nation-state and the modern society become conceptually undistinguishable. In terms of its structure, the article begins by explicating the paradoxical constitution of the debate; namely, the fact that methodological nationalism is simultaneously regarded as wholly untenable and all pervasive. It further illustrates the consequences of this paradoxical constitution by looking at some of the problems faced by some of the most sophisticated attempts at conceptualising the nation-state in sociology, nationalism studies, anthropology, social psychology and international relations. Both their strengths and weaknesses are revisited in order to identify what are the most pressing issues for the social sciences when they seek to overcome methodological nationalism. The following sections expand, in turn, on the theoretical and the historical dimensions of the debate. On the theoretical side, it is held that the avoidance of methodological nationalism requires of a strongly universalistic conception of modernity in which the nation-state is explicated as a result of modernitys deep-seated structural trends. Methodological nationalism is associated here with an explanatory reductionism; when the rise and main features of the nation-state are used to explicate the rise and main features of modernity itself. On the historical side, it is argued that, against the conventional view that the canon of the social sciences tended to reify and naturalise the nation-state, it provides us with valuable resources to exercise a more reflective attitude towards it. The reassessment of methodological nationalism lies here in the problem of its prevalence, that is, whether methodological nationalism a key if not the key feature of the history of the social sciences at large. Methodological nationalism: The paradoxical constitution of the debate Methodological nationalism is no doubt real; it can be found within the social sciences as much as within the real world itself. A first question we need to confront is a way out of the meaningless vicious circle in which the charge of methodological nationalism is allegedly found everywhere, used rather indiscriminately and being inadvertently reintroduced. Indeed, a most salient feature of the literature that has explicitly dealt with understanding the rise and main features of the nation-state in modernity is that no one positions oneself as in favour of

methodological nationalism. The polemic is just not split between those for whom methodological nationalism however we define it opens up new avenues for our knowledge of the nation-state and those who argue that it hinders our ability for dealing with it. Even if one takes into account the fact that there is a dispute over its causes, consequences and possible remedies, the fact remains that there is almost a consensual rejection of it. It can of course be argued that this is not surprising because, insofar as methodological nationalism is seen as a form of reification, it must surely be rejected. But it is nonetheless curious to realise that no one seems prepared to challenge the proposition that methodological nationalism is in fact a reductionist way of thinking. 1 But the paradoxical constitution of the debate comprises another dimension still. This is the feature that the label methodological nationalism is being thrown back and forth among the discussants, rather wildly, as a mark of shame. We are in the presence of a certain intellectual outlook that is universally rejected but which is, allegedly at least, equally fairly well extended across the contemporary social sciences. Methodological nationalism is generally recognised as a sin but we are left with no way out of it because we all become unintended sinners the very second we try to grasp the nation-states fundamental features and the problematic nature of its position in modernity: the very attempt at studying the nation-state with conventional social scientific means became coeval with its effective reification and naturalisation. We all believe ourselves to be smart enough to recognise the difficulties it poses, analytical enough to distinguish when we see it and sceptical enough to be able to transcend it. We all claim being aware of the problem but our arguments are all found equally problematic the very moment we try to put our hands on the nation-state. 2 The paradox of methodological nationalism consists thus in that no one admits to be committed to it and yet its presence is allegedly found almost in every corner of the twentieth-century social scientific landscape. The works I should like briefly to review in this section are chosen because, from their different angles, they have all made an important contribution to our understanding the nationstate. They make apparent possible solutions to the problem of methodological nationalism as they rather explicitly seek to avoid the kinds of reification, naturalisation and uniformity that are the true leitmotif of the different critiques of methodological nationalism over the last decade. But some of the problems they nonetheless confront are equally instructive so I would have something to say on them as well. My own contribution to the discussion lies in advancing a distinction between a theoretical and a historical version of the argument of methodological nationalism which may help breaking up the paradoxical constitution of the debate.

We may compare this, for instance, with the debate on methodological individualism - upon which, incidentally, the first wave of discussion on methodological nationalism was built. Methodological individualism has of course been constantly criticised as a reductionist way of thinking but it has never been short of support. 2 We all find methodological nationalism in somebody elses arguments only for analogous criticisms to be applied back onto our own work and there is no hyperbole here. As I criticized Ulrich Beck for reintroducing, in spite of his best intentions, methodological nationalism back into his own conceptualization of the nation-state he came after my criticisms by pointing out that it was my own methodological nationalism that prevented me from understanding the metaphorical sense in which he had intended its use (Chernilo 2006, Beck 2007: 292).
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An early expression of this movement of trying to conceptualise the nation-state without, in the same move, naturalising its history and reifying its success is found in the work of Anthony Giddens. He discussed, for over a decade, the importance of the nation-state for any sociological conceptualisation of modernity and was indeed one of the first writers to address quite explicitly the question of the rise and main features of the modern nation-state. In 1973, that is, before the notion of methodological nationalism was actually coined, he argued that [t]he primary unit of sociological analysis, the sociologists society in relation to the industrialised world at least - has always been, and must continue to be, the administratively bounded nation-state (Giddens 1973: 265). Later in 1981, he argued that the modern nationstate and modern capitalism were co-original and had co-evolved: capitalist states emerged as nation-states: the association between capitalism and the nation-state was not the accident of history that is has appeared to be to many Marxist and non-Marxist historians alike. He then added that despite its European origins, the nation-state system has become a world-wide one () the emergence of the nation state was integrally bound up with the expansion of capitalism (Giddens 1981: 12). The key for Giddens is the nation-states capacity for drawing together all the required resources that turn it into a kind of power-container shaping the development of the capitalist societies He reaches the climax of his studies into the role and position of the nation-state in modernity as he argues that the nation-state is central to whatever conceptualisation of modernity. The success of the nation-state as a modern sociopolitical arrangement has above all to do with its success in having become the organising centre of modernity itself: modern societies are nation-states, existing within a nation-state system () societies have often been understood by sociologists, implicitly or otherwise, as a clearly bounded system with an obvious and easily identifiable set of distinguishing traits (Giddens 1985: 1 & 17). Taken together, these propositions stand in an ambivalent relationship to methodological nationalism because they tend to make the characterisation of modernity to cohere around the nation-state: the success of modern institutions in transcending its local origins and reaching out globally is explicated by the success of the nation-state itself in making a coherent whole out of all these institutional arrangements. But as he arrives at these results he turns things around quite dramatically and makes the success of the nation-state as a modern socio-political to depend upon what he distinguishes as the four key structural dimensions of modernity: bureaucratisation, industrialisation, capitalism and militarization/surveillance (Giddens 1985). In fact, already in his early work he had qualified his commitment to the nation-states apparent centrality in modernity by arguing that the idea of society, understood as the national society, has never been the isolated, the internally developing system which has normally been implied in social theory (1973: 265). In a nutshell: the historical statement that the nation-state becomes central in modernity, however true, is independent from the explicatory proposition that modernity itself can be explicated as the sum or result of different national trajectories. Whereas the former is true for Giddens the latter is not because the causal relation moves the other way round: it is the development of modernity what accounts for the rise and success of the nation-state system and its worldwide expansion. If we now turn our attention to the field of nationalism studies, we can refer to the work of Anthony D. Smith. A student of Ernst Gellner, Smiths views (1973) on nations and nationalism build upon his own previous theoretically oriented reconstruction of the conceptions of development and evolution in mainstream sociology. He diagnosed serious difficulties in such sociological conceptions of developments in terms of their endogenous and internalist bias so he comes to the conclusion that sociologys thoroughly modernist

approach has in fact tended to neglect the importance of such a key aspect of social life as nationalism and national identities. The key to the point he made was that classical sociology had simply been unable to grasp the problems of nationhood, nation-building and the nationstate (Smith 1979, 1983). 3 The conviction he has held ever since that the rise of modern nation-states has to be traced back to the peoples own pre-modern ethnic origins remains intact (Smith 1991). Quite recently he summarised his own argument as follows: the fashionable Western insistence on multiculturalism and the polyethnic nation have not at all undermined the salience of the nation-state in the international scene. More dramatically, [n]either, within those national states, has it dissolved the centrality of dominant or core ethnies, whose culture, myths, mores and memories continue to define the national state (Smith 2006: 179). This kind of outlook has surely been subject to criticism. For once, Walker Connor alongside other modernist writers has argued that nations as such cannot be identified before the rise of mass movements in the late nineteenth century. In so doing, he rejects not only Smiths proposition that nations in their prior ethnie form are pre-modern. But he is equally going against the ontological consequence of Smiths ethno-symbolic approach. Nations are no longer the definitive Trger of human history they become when, in one way or another, they are traced back to their ancient origins. Although Connor firmly rejects the strong kind of methodological reductionism that is attached to any such transhistorical conceptions of human identity, he seems nonetheless to reintroduce it from the modernist backdoor, as it were. Nations have stopped being equivalent with the long dure only to become the unrivalled form of social identity in modernity so that the history of nations becomes in practice coeval with that of modernity itself. As soon as one integrates into one definition the two standards modern conceptions of nation political citizenry and ethnic identity then Connor (2004: 38) is in the position to conclude: the political history of the world since the Napoleonic Wars has largely been a tale of tension between the two identities, each possessing its own irrefragable and exclusive claim to political legitimacy. Connors and Smiths are surely mutually opposite standpoints when it comes to timing the emergence of the nation. But on what it is for us the critical proposition of pre-empting the salience of nations and nation-states in modernity, they look much more alike than otherwise may seem. In the fields of anthropology and migration studies, Andreas Wimmer and Nina G. Schiller (2002) have urged that methodological nationalism be definitively overcome. They are, moreover, among the few to have explicitly reflected and commented upon different versions of methodological nationalism in the social sciences. They quite rightly define it as the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of the modern world (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 302). And then they go on to distinguish between three different strands of methodological nationalism: ignorance, naturalization and territorial limitation. The three variants are more or less prominent in different fields of enquiry and mutually reinforce each other, forming a coherent epistemic structure, a self-reinforcing way of looking at and describing the social world. The three variants are more or less prominent in different fields of enquiry. Ignorance is dominant the modus of methodological nationalism in grand theory; naturalization of normal empirical science; territorial limitation of the study of nationalism and state building (Wimmer and Schiller 2002: 308). They come up with these three versions as a result of their own substantive empirical work so it is anything but surprising that they echo the standard complaint that so-called grand theory has simply ignored
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A claim that in stronger and weaker versions has often been made (Beck 2000, Thompson and Fevre 2001).

the nation-state. Their case against the methodological nationalism to be found in normal empirical social is however stronger. Schillers attention has been devoted to the relationship between migration and the nation-state and she duly complains on the mutually reinforcing sins of depicting recent migration trends as the rise of novel forms of social relations and of neglecting the central role of migratory trends throughout the history of nation-state (Basch, Schiller and Blanc 1994). Both these shortcomings create the wholly false dichotomy between the traditional and fully territorialised nation-state and the recent flurry of studies on flows, fluidities and mobilities (Levitt and Schiller 2004). Wimmers (2002: 52) focus has for his part been on the politics of ethnic cleansing as the exclusionary side of national democracy. The way in which he conceives of the nation-state is subtlety close to methodological nationalism as he firmly associates it with modernitys key features: modernity itself is cast in nationalist and ethnicised forms. The crucial element that pushes his anayleses beyond methodological nationalism is however his focus on how the nation-state incarnates the project of modernity with its lights (national democracy) as well as its shadows (ethnic cleansing). In a similar vein, Michael Billigs social psychological study focuses on the different ways in which the ideology of modern nationalim is uncritically reproduced at the level of common sense. What he finely refers to as the banal nationalism of most Western democracies is that kind of nationalism whose metonymic image () is not a flag which is constantly waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building (Billig: 1995: 8). He captures what I should like to call the opacity of the nation-state in modernity when he suggests that nationalism is simultaneously obvious and obscure and that nationalism is the ideology by which the world of nations has come to seem the natural world (Billig 1995: 36). And he equally understands that in order to grasp this opacity we need to go beyond the empirical recognition of a plurality of nation-states. We must rather look at the nation-state as a single form of modern socio-political arrangement: [w]ith historical hindsight, it might seem inevitable that the nation-state system emerged, but it is hard to see an inevitability about the particular nations themselves (Billig 1995: 28). There are also some other formulations which, although they begin to look more problematic in relation to methodological nationalism, one may still be prepared to give the benefit of the doubt: [h]istorical forces may have combined to produce the nation-state as modernitys logical form of governance. Yet, a willful anarchy seems to have accompanied the way the logical principle has been established in practice (Billig 1995: 24). He seeks to denounce the fallacy he witnesses in much of western social science between our patriotism and their nationalism (Billig 1995: 55). This separation is a result of the ideological prejudices upon which these disciplines would have been established and it comes a long way to reinforce the naturalization of the nation-state that is so prevalent in these same disciplines. But in breaking away from such a spurious difference his own theorizing begins to feel the heat of some of the real difficulties posed by the study of the nation-state. He challenges the canon of sociology to core by arguing that nowhere is the social sciences overall contamination with nationalistic presuppositions more apparent than in the widespread use of the idea of society: the society which lies at the of sociologys own selfdefinition is created in the image of the nation-state () the emphasis on society and the implicit modeling of society on nation, has both reified and concealed nationhood (Billig 1995: 53-4). Again in this case, Billigs arguments look the more accomplished the more they stick to the results of his own empirical studies; for instance, on the use of the national we in English tabloids. Somewhat ironically, however, he ends up mirroring the object of his critique. He reintroduces the dichotomy he seeks to overcome but now in the form of his

own self-critical attitude towards methodological nationalism and their blindness and naturalization that is, in mainstream social sciences of the nation-state. My final case refers to the discipline of international relations and the role that the so-called domestic analogy plays within it. This centres on whether the notion of an international society can be conceptualised, and establish the sources of its own legitimacy, by analogically inferring what its central features must be from those of the internal organisation of national societies. On the one hand, following Barry Buzan (2004) the underlying logic for the actual operation of the analogy can vary: individuals (as well as nation-states) may decide to enter into legal relations among themselves out of fear (the Hobbesian version of the analogy), selfinterest (the Lockean version) or indeed moral duty (the Kantian version). On the other hand, however, the final assessment of the validity of the domestic analogy depends upon whether similar operations effectively occur at both intra-national and extra-national levels (Bottici 2004, Bull 1977, Suganami 1989). This critical side of discussion is aptly summarised by Hidemi Suganami (1989: 19): the domestic analogy can be said to form part of the assumptions of any contemporary writer on international affairs who attributes the instability of the international system primarily to its decentralized structure. In other words, the issue lies not only in the explicit use and endorsement of the analogy but also in whether it is being implicitly introduced against any individual authors best intentions. There is an assessment still to be made as to whether the discipline of international relations as such can find from within its own canon and scholarly tradition the intellectual resources to think about the international without the use of domestic presuppositions. Indeed, Suganamis own survey of the use of the domestic analogy shows that explicit support for it has always been stronger among those who have a practical interest in the establishment and consolidation of an peaceful interstate system than between international relation theorists themselves the latter tend to be quite vocal in their rejection of the analogy (Rosenberg 2006, Shaw 2000). A second, more positive proposition is aptly captured by Barry Buzan (2004: 25-6) when he asks for the transcending of conventional boundaries of both sociology and political theory. He argues that it is within the context of a conversation between the two disciplines that we may find the right resources to abandon the traditional concept of international society and move the idea of society out of the state, and away from human beings as members. International society is not based on the crude idea of a domestic analogy which simply scales the society within states up to the global level. In relation to the debate on methodological nationalism, the problem of the domestic analogy poses critical questions on the autonomy of the discipline of international relations, whether the resources for such a conceptualisation are to be found within or beyond outside international relations itself. Yet it still leaves unresolved the question of the nationstates history and main features in modernity. This reconstruction is anything but exhaustive and its focus is not surveying all the problems being faced when the nation-state is being studied. Rather, I have tried to prove my case that difficulties are bound to emerge because the nation-state has proved elusive to all social scientific traditions. Indeed, all these writers would duly reject that the charge of methodological nationalism is raised against their works. To do so would not only be unfair to their own explicit intentions but, more importantly, it would also go against the most relevant substantive contributions they make. I have nonetheless been also pointing out to some tricky issues, unresolved tensions and unintended consequences coming out of their writings. The problems they face are not too different from the ones with which I have also struggled (Chernilo 2007a).

A first conclusion we may need to draw to begin unravelling this paradoxical constitution of the debate has been singled out by Peter Beilharz (2008) as he questions whether the debate centres at all on methodological questions or rather it is about theoretical or indeed ontological issues. We face a real dilemma here. On the one hand, we may be well advice to start calling things the way they actually are and start calling the controversy theoretical or even ontological nationalism. On the other hand, however, the gains we may obtain by so doing may cancel themselves out by the opening up of a new and rather artificial controversy over the label itself. My own option, for the time being at least, is to stick with the term that has so far served us reasonably well at least because it has brought to the foreground the debate on the social sciences nationalistic presuppositions and implications that were questions that had remained in the background for too long. Having said this, we do need to acknowledge more clearly that more than strictly methodological questions are at stake here and be able point out what these planes actually are. The specifically methodological dimension is apparent in the question Schiller and Wimmer raise in relation to how methodological nationalism makes certain historical trends and forms of identity just invisible. This is indeed consistent with Ulrich Becks proposal of methodological cosmopolitanism that as long as statistical keep being uncritically collected at the national level, and keep being organised for cross-national comparisons, we will keep lacking the kind of resources we require to think outside the national box (Beck and Sznaider 2006). The importance of this cannot be emphasised enough. A number of aspects of modern social life old trends as well emerging ones cannot be registered, or get underrepresented, on the basis of national statistics: from the centuries-old experiences of transnational families whose memories and current lives have been split among several nationalities and states to the rapid transformation of sporting allegiances in which neighbourhood, town, region and several countries become intermingled in the fate of one team; from the persistent cosmopolitan networks of protection that intellectuals and revolutionaries have provided for themselves in times of crises to the changing funding-strategies of scientific institutions which owe much more to their local and global partners than to their national location. The problems and challenges in the measurement of social trends are possibly the only strictly methodological aspects of the discussion we carry on under the name of methodological nationalism. The question of its transcendence would take here the form of gathering empirical information in such a way that it is possible to reflect upon trends and processes that have been traditionally neglected when national categories pre-empt data collection. But however important these may be assessed, we have already demonstrated that they are not the only dimensions in which we are interested when we speak of methodological nationalism in a broader sense. I would now like to suggest a way forward from this impasse via the distinction between a theoretical or explanatory way of addressing the issue of methodological nationalism and an historical or empirical one. The theoretical or explanatory version of the argument of methodological nationalism arises when it is assumed that the deep-seated conceptual structure of the social sciences would have led them to think exclusively from within the national box. Although this form of methodological nationalism has an historical cause, as it emerges out of the actual co-evolution of the nation-state and the social sciences for the best part of the nineteenth century, its key mode of operation is actually conceptual. Modernitys deep-seat trends and structural features are seen as a result of national trajectories, the conceptualisation of modernity explicitly or otherwise - would be wholly reliant on the nation-state to have any

real explanatory purchase. There would be a sort of natural teleology in social theory in which the consummation of the project of modernity would mirror the notion of a neatly-divided world of internally homogenous and externally fully-sovereign nation-states. Methodological nationalism lies here at the epistemological level; it is found in the way social scientific concepts, allegedly at least, were and continue to be construed and actually work. The empirical or historical version of the argument of methodological nationalism also starts from the premise of the co-evolution of the nation-state and the social sciences but it leads to a different end-product. It stresses the idea that states and nations have been the major actor in modernity over the past two centuries or so and that modernitys most salient historical empirical trend has been no other than their unification along territorially, normatively and culturally. Methodological nationalism is here seen as a factual trend: the social sciences have studied and may need to remain studying modernity in national terms as long as modernity itself remains nationally structured. It is the historical canon of the social sciences themselves that would lend support to the idea that the nation-state and modernity are coeval. The very foundation of social theory is assessed here as being built upon a presupposition that has gone unnoticed yet it is all encompassing. All the social sciences major concepts such as class, culture, society and the state would have taken the nation-state as their ultimate locus implicitly or otherwise. There is no question that both versions can complement each other rather neatly but they are also different in terms of their presuppositions, operative logics and final outcomes. These two kinds of methodological nationalism neither automatically require nor necessarily presuppose one another they do operate independently. I believe that the distinction between these two forms may help explicate some of the difficulties have just reviewed. The substantive lessons that can no doubt be learnt from them seem to oscillate between overcoming one kind of methodological nationalism and struggling with the other. In what follows I shall expand on the theoretical and the historical argument respectively. Theory: The problem of explicating the nation-state This theoretical version of methodological nationalism can adopt a soft formulation in the view that the nation-state is modernitys key organising centre and the locus around which the whole modern project almost naturally coheres. But even if there is a clear risk of naturalisation of the nation-state when such a position is adopted, an even more problematic move towards reification can still be found. A bolder version of this explanatory kind of methodological nationalism arises when the rise and main features of the nation-state are used to explicate the rise and main features of modernity itself. This is the belief that the nationstate can, on its own, be used to account for modernitys main features. This is particularly problematic because rather than looking at the nation-state as the formidable institutional outcome of modernitys deeper and longer-term trends that it actually is, the nation-state is taken instead as the fundamental cause of these trends; the ultimate explication of modernity depends upon the nation-state. The nation-state becomes the key independent variable with the help of which whatever aspect of modernity can be eventually delineated. Giddens, Billig and Wimmer and may be found falling on the softer version but they all can duly plea no guilty in relation to the latter as their arguments all move from modernitys central features to the nation-state. The nation-state is the central container of modern social relations in these works but its emergence and main features are accounted for from the outside of the nation-state, as it were.

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Whereas Giddens refers to such structural processes as bureaucratisation, industrialisation, capitalism and militarization/surveillance, Wimmer explicates that dynamics of ethnic exclusion are at the bottom of nation-building and state-formation processes. Indeed, the question of methodological nationalism arose to counteract some internalist tendencies that were arguably prevalent in 1970s sociology, so in the controversy the strictly methodological plane has always been subordinated to the more substantive question of the role of the nation-state in explicating modernitys key developmental tendencies (Smith above). The critical emphasis lies here in the explanatory value of the nation-state in the understanding of whatever aspect of modern social life: from Sonderwegs that account for the peculiarities of national customs and tastes to the way in which the national curricula and health provision are organised; from millennial phenotypes to differentiated attitudes towards the use of cars and rules that govern pets and childrens access to restaurants. The triviality of the examples only reinforces the seriousness of the point. Culturalist and indeed nationalistic strategies that take for granted the worlds division into nations and then explicate the dramatic expansion of the nation-state throughout the world as the kind of natural telos of 190 or so Volksgeists simply dont do the job. We require of a stronger rather than a weaker conceptualisations of modernity in terms of a single evolutionary accomplishment of the human species so that we can then begin to depict and delineate its internal differentiation according to a number of different lines - regional, religious, socio-economic and indeed national. Rather than leading to a state of complete incommensurability among worldviews, I suggest that we are now in an interesting position to reassess modernitys truly original universalistic aspirations because we need to come to terms, simultaneously, with its global expansion and the decline of its Eurocentric matrix: the task is that of comprehending those general trends and events that mark the truly worldwide condition of current modernity without, in the same move, continue advancing unsound generalizations from the West to the rest. This is in my view the most crucial contribution of the historical sociology that speaks of modernity as a single formation that is differentiated into multiple trajectories (Moore 1967, Mouzelis 1999, Therborn 1995). 4 This brings to the fore the ontological implications of the debate: whether the nation can be regarded as a rather natural and necessary form of human community throughout history or whether nation-state has become such a natural and necessary form of socio-political arrangement only in modernity. We have witnessed the importance of this issue in relation to the constitutive debate of nationalism studies between modernist and primordialist or ethnosymbolists. These are surely mutually opposite standpoints when it comes to timing the emergence of the nation but on what it is for us the more crucial presupposition of preempting the salience of nations and the centrality of nation-states, both in terms of everyday worldviews and causal properties, they do not seem too far apart. Indeed, those who are immersed in this discussion tend argue that the dispute can be settled on the basis of empirical research. I would like to hold, on the contrary, that couched in ontological terms the discussion is possibly unsolvable as it is above all about the ultimate presuppositions of the different conceptual frameworks.

In terms of the historical performance of this approach I can refer to the literature with which I a most familiar: Jorge Larrans (2000) and Aldo Mascareos (2008) works on Latin American modernity as one formation within modernitys worldwide context.

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In fact, an expression of the presuppositional character of the ontological discussion is found in the normative issue of the extent to which the nation-state was, is and will continue to be ultimate source of modern political legitimacy. My argument here is that the modern idea of the nation has never been the unchallenged locus of political legitimacy in modernity nor was the only standpoint that strove for the realisation of modernitys normative foundation. The nation actually arose alongside two other, equally important, conceptions of modern sociopolitical relations: one as class and the other cosmopolitanism. Class, nation and cosmopolitanism did not first emerge as a challenge to each other but as a way of complementing one another. The very idea of the modern nation could only fully unfold because of the support it borrowed from the transformations in socioeconomic relations in terms of class and from the universalistic normative appeal of cosmopolitanism. On the one hand, national politics emerged simultaneously and complementarily to class politics (Mann 1993, Hobsbawm 1994, Fine and Chernilo 2003). Thus, for instance, by the outbreak of the First World War, Marxist writers and revolutionaries were asking themselves whether the current imperialist phase of capitalism meant a reconfiguration of the relationships between working class internationalism and the expansionist tendencies of Western nation-state and in that sense they faced that relationship certainly as a problem but not as a fixed contradiction. And equally importantly, that cosmopolitanisms claim to universalism is in no automatic opposition to the nation or the nation-state (Delanty 2006, Durkheim 1992, Fine 2007, Chernilo 2007a, 2007b, 2008, Habermas 2001). They all three coevolved historically in modernity and if they began looking as increasingly incompatible towards the end of the nineteenth century that is something to be explained rather than taken as a self-evident truth. The assessment of whether the early League of Nations and then the United Nations have lived up to the promises and standards upon which they were first instituted is surely debatable (Suganami 1989): states were rapid in learning how to best defend themselves military because good legal arguments do not win wars in the battlefields. And peoples learnt equally quickly that a highly creative reinterpretation of the historical record alongside national lines was a rather useful tool to deal with abrupt crises, use other groups as scapegoats, claim and reclaim territory and eventually bolster internal unity. But the normative way out of methodological nationalism is based upon the fact the twentieth-century interstate architecture is unconceivable without the right granting people to become nations and then nation-states. We can briefly refer to how, roughly during the same period, even such chauvinistic writers as Friedrich Meinecke were able to recognise that cosmopolitanism and the nation-state had coevolved in modernity. Meineckes thesis was surely that this allegiance was bound and about to dissolve but he had no problem not only in acknowledging but also in defending the thesis that it had been a necessary one. The belated emergence of the German national state owed a great deal to the original claim to universalism between the nation and humanity underlying the French Revolution: the true, the best German national feeling includes the cosmopolitan ideal of a humanity beyond nationality () it is un-German to be merely German(Meinecke 1970: 21). Beyond their co-originality he is also setting up the starting point of an historical trend would move from humanity to the nation and then, with the unification of the Reich in the 1870s, the state (Meinecke 1970: 48). We can see Meinecke falling for the softer kind of methodological nationalism I introduced at the beginning of this section. And even though he tried to explicate the nation-states alleged success in shaping up modern social life in terms of how it outmuscled in this case cosmopolitanism, the fact remains that cosmopolitanism remains a critical part of the equation so that the nation-state can only be explicated from the

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outside in, as it were. Nation, class and cosmopolitanism all required one another and no one has ever been able to monopolise modern political loyalties. Indeed, a more sophisticated version of this is found Norbert Elias (1996: 133) as he argues that class, nation and cosmopolitanism belong together in the historical transition to modernity. He explicates that the transition from a cosmopolitan to a national outlook in class terms: On balance this we-feeling of the pre-revolutionary upper classes of Europe, which surpassed the frontiers of states, was probably stronger than any we-feeling any feeling of identity which men of these upper classes had with the lower classes of their own country. Their attachment to their own state did not yet have the character of an attachment to the nation. With few exceptions national sentiments were alien to noblemen of Europe prior to the French Revolution and in some countries for a long time after it () It was only in classsocieties, not in inter-state societies, that the identity feelings of the ruling elites, and in the course of time those of wider strata, too, acquired the specific stamp of national feelings (1996: 143-4). At stake is in fact what he refers to as the duality of the nation-states normative codes (): a moral code descended from that of rising sections of the tiers tat, egalitarian in character, and whose highest value is man the human individual as such; and a nationalist code descended from the Machiavellian code of princes and ruling aristocracies, inegalitarian in character, and whose highest value is a collectivity a state, the country, the nation to which an individual belongs (Elias 1996: 154-5). Normatively, therefore, the nation was valuated in so far as it seemed to be an adequate place for the effective realisation of modernitys inclusionary tendencies as well as democratic hopes. The nation was well regarded because it appeared to be an adequate vehicle for this kind of universalistic project. Democracy and individual freedoms were not preferred because they were primarily national but rather the opposite; the importance of the nation was dependant upon its universalistic outlook. The fact these expectations proved short-lived and made apparent the nations ugly faces has of course to be taken most seriously (Mann 2005, Wimmer 2002). On the one hand, the international system of states that has been slowly emerging over the past four or five centuries can be neither explicated by nor reduced to the fantastic notion of the formal equality of all nation-states on the basis of an equivocal respect for the right to self determination. The Realpolitik of the Cold War makes such a proposition a moot point. On the other hand, however, this same international system has become increasingly dependant upon the normative support of a cosmopolitan reading of the universal validity of the right to self-determination of nations. When the US decides to go solo, mock international institutions and reject multilateralism their military might may or may not succeed but they are not only in flagrant breach of international law. Most crucially, they have fundamentally lost the normative high ground (Habermas 2006). The key to transcending methodological nationalism lies here in construing explanations of the nation-states success in modernity without simultaneously having to explicate modernity itself as a result, or on the basis, of the nation-state. We similarly have to reject the notion of the purely endogenous development of national cultures and traditions. We are in need of some things that are indeed new; namely original and more flexible ways of collecting data. But we equally require a deeper and soberer consideration of different approaches deep-seated explanatory, normative and even ontological implication. The question is how to be able to look at the past from a different angle as much as the discovery of new facts themselves, conceptual refinement and reflexive judgment rather than fear for being haunted by zombie

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categories and swift declarations of obsolescence. But in order to achieve these we still have to turn to the historical side of the problem of understanding methodological nationalism. History: The question of prevalence A key historical dimension of the debate on methodological nationalism refers to the assessment of its prevalence throughout the conventional canon of the social sciences from the late eighteenth century. In contradistinction to the paradox to which we referred above, here we do find two neatly divided camps. On the one side, by far the most widely held proposition maintains that methodological nationalism is a key, if not the key, feature of the history of social theory. This position is found in the works of Billig, Smith, Bull, Rosenberg, Schiller and Wimmer. From different angles and standpoints they all agree on the fact argue that the conventional canon of the social sciences is not of much help when it comes to dealing with the nation-state. On the other side, the argument is being made that if and when these bestknown figures of social theory are read together they begin to offer a conceptualisation of the nation-state that is in fact able to curb explanatory methodological nationalism. 5 This more favourable assessment argues that despite all its inaccuracies, shortcomings and wrong assumptions, the core of the project of social theory refers to the critique of particularistic worldviews such as Eurocentrism and narrow analytical frameworks such as methodological nationalism. We have been rediscovering the way in which previous sociology and social theory were able to deal with and think about the global and cosmopolitanism in ways that seemed nearly impossible only a decade or so ago. It is then my intuition that colleagues tend, rather quickly, to be glossing over the difference between the loose, unreflective and even untenable images of the nation of the past and the solid and stable self-presentation of nation-states themselves during the twentieth century. This is apparent, moreover, as the cases being raised against the canon of so-called grand theory are in fact mutually incompatible. They are simultaneously charged for their ignorance of the nation-state (Wimmer, Schiller) and for taking it for granted (Smith, Giddens, Billig). In other words, classical and contemporary social theory is found equally at fault for having made too much and too little out of the nation-states history and main features. In opposition to this, I believe we can try and reconstruct these traditions by letting the difficulties that have been experienced to emerge and the tentative resolutions that have been advanced to unfold. We have to stop imposing backwardly a sense of the centrality and necessity of the nation-state that past writers simply did not have. A revision of our understanding of the foundational period of the social sciences is a precondition to be able to transcend and overcome methodological nationalism. I am not arguing here that all we need to do to move beyond methodological nationalism is to spend some time reading good old books. Neither is my argument that any individual or group of writers got it completely right in relation to understanding the nation-state. The point I am making is rather that we need to put into brackets what we think we know about their understanding of the nation-state and give new outlooks and propositions at least the chance
If in relation to the debate on globalisation Luke Martell (2007) has convincingly pointed out to the rise of a third wave that is turning some the previous shortcomings and exaggerations into the possibility of advancing more sober and sound accounts of it, we may well be at the doorsteps of a similar move in relation to improving our understanding of methodological nationalism and, more importantly, how to do without it (Inglis and Robertson 2008, Turner 1990, 2006, Outhwaite 2006, Fine 2003a, 2007, Chernilo 2007a).
5

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to emerge. The methodological insight we require is again aptly captured by Norbert Elias (1996: 123): The increasing tendency to conceptualize processes as if they were unchanging objects represents a more widespread pattern of conceptual development running conversely to that of society at large, the development and dynamics of which have noticeable quickened from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. t is in this context that the following claim can be put forward: equivocal as they arguably are, when we look at them as long-term intellectual tradition, the references to the nation and the nation-state during the foundational period of modernity do not point in the direction to methodological nationalism (Chernilo 2007a). For once, Karl Lwith demonstrates that references to the nation have been long part of the philosophical and theological lexicon of western thinking. Surely, some kind of unity can be found among them; possibly around the notion of a group of people which shares one or more features that makes their depiction as a group plausible. But this recognition is at a very long way indeed from any statement about their transhistorical immutability, cultural homogeneity, causal powers and intellectual salience. For instance, already in the early eighteenth century Giambatista Vicos The New Science was established on the principle of civil theology that was able to describe the ideal eternal history traversed in time by the history of every nation (Lwith 1964: 124). Vicos use of the idea of the nation in the early eighteenth century was that of human populations whose historical differences were a result of Gods plans. This use of the nation is already very different from Voltaires systematic references to it in his Essays on the Manners and Mind of Nations of 1756, which was close to an empirical register of cultural civilisations whose rationale was the secular idea of humanitys universal progress (Lwith 1964: 105). And this again no doubt different from Kants (1999) use of the term in his cosmopolitan writings as a Federation of Nations the association of political communities that would voluntarily enter into peaceful and cooperative relations with one another with a view of establishing a condition of perpetual peace. The point I am trying to make is that the fact that the word nation has been consistently used throughout modernity does not mean that different social actors, political elites and indeed scholars have meant one and the same thing in using it. During the Enlightenment the nation was able to fulfil the role of conceiving of the way in which modern socio-political life could and should be purposefully reconstituted. Whether this vision adopted a more radical take on the challenges posed by the dissolving sources of authorities of the old regime or it preferred the more moderate restriction of the monarchs absolute power alongside republican institutions, the fact remain that a certain way of naming the political constituency had become recognised. These early conceptions, however, cannot be uncritically related to the romantic conceptions of the late nineteenth century that emphasised less the nations political role and more its cultural specificity and mission. And again both the Enlightenment and romantic references to the nation are different from its post-colonial use during the decolonisation waves of the post Second World War period. It is the nations semantic appeal that still demands fuller explanations but this cannot be accomplished by glossing over the differences to be found among disparate references to the nation: it is precisely generality of the references to it vis--vis the flexibility it allows for what needs to be explicated. Let me illustrate this with two additional examples. Sankar Muthu has urged that the critique of imperialism and colonialism was a key motif in such key Enlightenment thinkers as Rousseau, Kant and Herder. He complements standard reconstructions of the Enlightenment and demonstrates that standing up against Empires was

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as constitutive a trend of the movement as any other of its most salient features. Muthus (2003: 9) argument is that the more particularity and diversity was being emphasised the more effectively inclusive and indeed universalistic these theories became: as the particularity and partial incommensurability of human lives came to the fore in a number of late eighteenthcentury political writings, the moral universalism that occupied a formal, but ultimately hollow, position in earlier political theories became more genuinely universal. A dramatic nationalistic reduction was then effected after the Enlightenment and this may come a long way to explain the transparency of methodological nationalism that is witnessed in the assessments of contemporary social sciences: anti-imperialist sentiments largely fell by the wayside as the eighteenth century came to a close () By the mid nineteenth-century anti-imperialist thinking was virtually absent from Western European intellectual debates (Muthu 2003: 5). Robert Fines reassessment of the relationship between Kant and Hegel with regard to cosmopolitanism can be read along similar lines. In his convincing reading of Hegel, he is no longer as a champion of nationalism. Such a narrow interpretation would be based on the way Hegel questions Kants association of nationalism with immaturity and blind passion by exploring the rational foundations of patriotism (Fine 2003b: 616). Far from it, he demonstrates that instead of rejecting Kants cosmopolitanism tout court, Hegel was in fact concerned with cosmopolitanism being turned into an ideal notion beyond actual legal relations and devoid of any real socio-historical content; Hegel makes cosmopolitanism real and opens the space for action on the basis of a more complex understanding of social reality (Fine 2003b: 610). The same Hegel who seemingly reified the state and would give attributed god-like qualities to it was however a philosopher concerned with individual freedoms, universal rights as well as national self-determination. Both Muthu and Fine are not only trying to recover their heroes from unfair criticisms, they are also shedding new light on past authors whose works we allegedly know all too well. More dramatically, they are opening our historical imagination of past times a time that supposedly was increasingly dominated by the nationstate as the ultimate standard of political modernity by opening up the conventional formulations of the social sciences own canon. The ignorance of the nation-state that is attributed to social theory may be addressed back to current commentators own lack of in-depth analysis of the works being criticised. More substantively, my point here is threefold. First, that the task of immersing oneself into the canon of social theory is no second class intellectual endeavour. It does not replace first-hand empirical research nor can it be understood as the uncritical celebration or repetition of a disciplinary common sense. But it is a job that requires as much time, care and the critical and open mind that is intrinsic to all scholarly projects. Second, that we remain sceptical when distinctions between them (in the past) and us (in the present) get too neat. We are better off when we integrate our own contributions as a part of, rather than standing in opposition to, the intellectual or disciplinary traditions to which we belong. This may not bode well in terms of catching public attention but it does help reinforcing epistemological cogency and explanatory purchase. Third, that a more subtle understanding of social theorys account on the nation-state may still be the one of best antidote we still have against the reintroduction of methodological nationalism from the back door. As we have argued, different variants of methodological nationalism operate independently so being on firm ground in relation to one does not secure our position with regard to others. We need as many checks and balances as we can get and past social theory is a valuable asset here.

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Needles to say, the relevance of these historically oriented reflections does not lie primarily in relation to setting the record straight. Rather, they centre on what they may tell us about what methodological nationalism actually is and the ways in which we are reasonably able to choose among competing alternatives to it. We are still in need of a more sensible understanding of the development of the nation-state vis--vis the evolution of the different conceptions of it in modernity. We have to find a way to delineate the nation-states enduring features that effectively make it a single socio-political arrangement in modernity but that must be a strategy that, simultaneously, is able to express the changing faces of the nation-state as an everyday notion and a social-scientific concept. Conclusions Methodological nationalism is real. It is found in social theory as much as in empirical research, in the states self-presentation and in everyday life discourses. It will not disappear once and for all so we have to keep it under control as much as we possibly can. One conclusion I should like to draw is that, no matter how much care we put into the task of avoiding methodological nationalism, we must not get too cosy with arguments that claim to have actually achieved so. When it comes to assessing the results accomplished by classical and contemporary social scientists, we have to realise that certainties and successes are not exclusively on one side as neither are mistakes and shortcoming only on the other. We remain wary of any purposefully deceiving or indeed self-deceiving proposition that states to have definitively overcome methodological nationalism whether it affirms its success on the basis of political voluntarism (be reassured: we now live in a cosmopolitan age / be reassured: we still have nation-states to protect us from neoliberalism and neoimperialism); theoretical vantage points (sociologys key concepts and methods are either coeval with or inimical to the nation-state) or indeed positivistic faith (we can now demonstrate that the nation-state has become less relevant in shaping peoples lives / we can use similar empirical evidence to effectively demonstrate the opposite claim). We shall neither be defeated, intellectually as much as normatively, by the nation-states opacity nor claim victory over the difficulties it once and again poses to us. The distinction between versions of methodological nationalism hereby offered may help correct some of the imbalances being found. The more we refine our knowledge of the foundational period of the social sciences the less plausible nationalistic explications of modernity become. The more social theorys universalistic outlook comes to the fore the less its normative and empirical Eurocentrism remains exercising its influence hidden from critical scrutiny. But an equally important lesson from the works being reviewed here is that when it comes to capturing the nation-states opacity there are no safe places once and for all. We are seeking a way for breaking up the deadlock between the reification of the nation-state and the inability of making any claim whatsoever on it. This proves difficult not only because of the shortcomings of our conceptual tools but because the nation-state has proved successful in changing and re-inventing itself. We are after strategies that allow us to make sense of the nations past and main features without simultaneously attributing full coherence to those images and turning them into the organising centre of modern political life. And the solutions we are most likely to find will prove unstable and are bound to create difficulties of their own. The critique of methodological nationalism we are in need of requires the disposition to be sceptical without becoming cynical, the ability to let the ambiguity stand without slipping into

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relativism, the commitment to understanding without flying on the face of conflicting evidence. The transcendence of methodological nationalism requires more rather than less theory. But it is a use of theory which, apart from the analytical mind, points towards a reflective mode; it is closer to an intellectual attitude than to the certainty of a definitive set of procedures or protocols. The move beyond methodological nationalism we are after must be prepared to go back regularly and re-assesses its own previous presuppositions and statements in order to see whether methodological nationalism is being reintroduced from any door normative, ontological, conceptual that has not been appropriately locked up. It must be committed to grasping the substantive features of the nation-state as a modern form of socio-political arrangement but prepared to resist the temptation of making it the key explanatory variable of modernity. And it must remain suspicious of rapid assurances on the nation-states successes and failures, its fantastic potentialities and horrible demons so that it does not fall prey of the nation-states own uncritical celebration nor of its critics damnation.
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