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Ethnicity and nationalismin Europe
today
E.J. HOBSBAWM
David l. Kertzer, Following recent custom, one of the plenarysessions at this close to a thousandanthropologists.It is reproducedhere
WilliamR. KenanJr. past year's AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation featured along with the comments by Verderyand Fox.
Professorof a distinguishednon-anthropologistwhose work has been
Anthropologyat influentialin the anthropologicalcommunity.This year's David I. Kertzer
BowdoinCollege, speakerwas Eric Hobsbawm,who gave the majoraddressat
organizedtheplenary a session devoted to the natureof nationalism.In addition,
session. Amonghis I speak to you not simply as a historian who has been
two anthropologists- KatherineVerderyand Richard G.
books are Ritual, Fox - added their own comments.
interested in the development of nationalism and has
Politics, and Power written something about it, but as part of my subject.
Given the theme of the 1991 AAA meeting - Nationalism,
(1988, Yale U. P.) and For historiansare to nationalismwhat poppy-growersin
ethnicity, race and racism - and the world events that have
Comradesand
been absorbingso much of our attentionin recent months, Pakistan are to heroin-addicts:we supply the essential
Christians:Religion and
PoliticalStrugglein there could scarcely have been be a more appropriatefocus raw materialfor the market.Nations without a past are
CommunistItaly (1990, for the plenary session. The problemof nationalismin contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the
WavelandP.; revised Europe,though, is not only a matterof contemporary past, whatjustifies one nation against others is the past,
edition of book political concern, for it also cuts to the heartof the
and historians are the people who produce it. So my
published in 1980 by anthropologicalenterprise.The allegiances that people form,
the identities that they create for themselves, the histories
profession, which has always been mixed up in politics,
CambridgeU.P.).
that they construct,these are all centralissues of becomes an essential component of nationalism. More
Katherine Verdery, anthropologicalconcern.The increasingattentionthat so even than the ethnographers,philologists and other
Professor of anthropologistsare paying to Europenot only promises to suppliers of ethnic and national services who have
Anthropologyat Johns shed new light on the crucial events occurringthere now, usually also been mobilized. In what terms do Ar-
Hopkins University,is but also promises to make majorcontributionsto the menians and Azeris argue about who has the right to
the author of two books developmentof anthropologicaltheorymore generally.
on Romanianpolitical Mountain Karabakhwhich, I remind you, is in Azer-
There can be few, if any, non-anthropologistswhose work is
life and society: beijan, but inhabitedmainly by Armenians?In terms of
as familiarto anthropologistsas that of Eric Hobsbawm.
TransylvanianVillagers The scope and influence of his writingshave been
arguments about the Caucasian Albanians, a people
(1983), and National which no longer exists but which in the Middle Ages
breathtaking,from studies of the jazz scene, throughhis
Ideology under inhabited the disputed region. Were they more like, or
monumentalthree-volumehistory of the nineteenth-century
Socialism: Identityand
(TheAge of Revolution,TheAge of Capital and TheAge of unlike the Armenians who are there now? This is es-
CulturalPolitics in
Ceausescu's Romania Empire)to his several books on the history of labourand sentially a problem for historical research, in this case
(1991), bothpublished revolutionarymovements. As historianEugene Genovese endlessly speculative historical debates. (I take this ex-
by the U. of CaliforniaP. has written, 'few if any serious historians... have remained ample from Nora Dudwick of the University of Pen-
I
without a large debt to his work. Nor has his influence nsylvania). Unfortunately the history that nationalists
Richard G. Fox, been limited to the corridorsof academia.His penetrating
want is not the history that professional academic his-
Professor of analyses of contemporarypolitics have involved him in
Anthropologyat Duke political debate throughoutEurope.I can vouch that nothing torians, even ideologically committed ones, ought to
University,has authored of importhappenstoday in Italy without some major supply. It is a retrospective mythology. Let me repeat
and edited several newspaperpublishingHobsbawm'scritiqueof unfolding yet again the words of Ernest Renan in his famous lec-
books.Among his recent events. ture 'What is a Nation' in 1882: 'Forgettinghistory, or
books are Gandhian From his first book, his famed 1959 study of Primitive even getting history wrong (V'erreur historique) are an
Utopia: Experimentsin Rebels, to his most recent,Nations and Nationalismsince
Culture(1989, Beacon essential factor in the formation of a nation, which is
1780, Hobsbawm's work is notable for its comparative
P.) and Lions of the why the progress of historical studies is often
characterand its interestin the theoreticalcontributions
Punjab:Culturein the dangerous to a nationality'. So a historian who writes
anthropologyoffers to historicalresearch.In fact, Primitive
Making (1985, U. of about ethnicity or nationalismcannot but make a politi-
Rebels was based on a series of lectures at the University of
CaliforniaP.), a study of cally or ideologically explosive intervention.
the evolution of Sikh Manchesterthat Hobsbawmgave at the invitationof Max
Gluckman,and such chaptersin that book as 'Ritualin Let me begin with a semantic query. If there is any
ethnic identity.
social movements' clearly show the imprintof Gluckman standard criterion today of what constitutes a nation
and other British social anthropologists.My own interestin with a claim to self-determination,i.e. to setting up an
both anthropologyand Italy was, in fact, given a big boost independentterritorialnation-state,it is ethnic-linguis-
by readingPrimitiveRebels as an undergraduate. tic, since language is taken, wherever possible, to ex-
Hobsbawm's more recent works have similarly made major
press and symbolize ethnicity. But of course it is some-
contributionsto the dialogue between anthropologistsand
historians.His 1983 edited volume (with Terence Ranger), times not possible, because historical research
1. 'The politics of class demonstratesconclusively that the kind of standardized
struggle in the history The Inventionof Tradition,not only has made that phrase
into a household word among anthropologists,but has also written language which can be used to represent eth-
of society: an appraisal
of the work of Eric helped promptan extremely importantrethinkingof the nicity or nationalityis a ratherlate historic construction
Hobsbawm', in The implicationsof the uses of history in our discipline. His - mostly of the 19th century or even later - and in any
Power of the Past: volume on Nations and Nationalism (1990), influencedby case quite often it does not exist at all, as between
Essaysfor Eric such anthropologistsas ErnestGellner and FredrikBarth, Serbs and Croats. Even then, however, the ethnic dis-
Hobsbawm,edited by similarly advancesthis dialogue.
tinction, whatever it may signify, is made. I spend my
Pat Thane, Geoffrey Eric Hobsbawmserved for many years as professorof
Economic and Social History at the University of London, holidays in a cottage in Wales which is administratively
Crossick and Roderick and legally less distinct from Englandthan Connecticut
Floud, Cambridge and is currentlyProfessorof Politics and Society at the New
School for Social Research.His honoursare legion. His is from New York State. Yet even though in my part
U.P., 1984.
lecture, given in Chicago on November 23, 1991, drew Welsh has not been spoken for a long time, and indeed
- .j w
ientation is found for other reasons elsewhere. Is it an
accident that Quebec separatismbecame a major force
5,7- at the end of a decade during which the Quebec birth-
rate had virtually halved and (for the first time) fallen
well below that of Canada?I The decades since 1950,
the forty most revolutionary years in the history of
human society, should lead us to expect a massive dis-
integrationof old values, a collapse of old certainties.
The 'nation' is not as obvious a fall-back position
everywhere as it is in those parts of the globe whose
frontiers were drawn on Wilsonian-Leninistlines after
1918, and neither is that old-time religion. But it is one
such position, and the demonstrationeffect of central
A defaced poster of innovation, as in the phrase 'the personal is political'. and eastern Europe naturallyencourages it, where local
Gorbachevin Vilnius, Yet, inevitably it has a political dimension. But under conditions are favourable.
Lithuania,outside the what circumstances does it become politically
parliament, /5 Januarv However, separatismis exceptional in Europeoutside
1991. Among the objects separatist? the ex-Soviet zone. National xenophobia shading into
pinned up bv indignant Miroslav Hroch has tried to answer this question for racism is almost universal. And it poses a problem
citizens are Soviet contemporary Central and Eastern Europe by com- which I cannot solve. What exactly is being defended
passports, money and a parison with 19th century small-nation linguistic against 'the other', identified with the immigrant
medal. Photo: Alik nationalism. One element he stresses in both cases is
,Kapliz.C Associated strangers?Who constitutes 'us' poses less of a problem,
Press. that it is a lot easier to understandlanguage demands for the definition is usually in terms of existing states.
than the theory and institutionsof democracy and con- 'We' are French,or Swedes, or Germansor even mem-
stitutional society, especially for people who lack both bers of politically defined subunits like Lombards,but
political education and political experience. But more distinguished from the invading 'them' by being the
crucially he stresses social disorientation: 'real' Frenchmen or Germans or Brits, as defined
In a socialsituationwherethe old regimewas collapsing, (usually) by putative descent or long residence. Who
whereold relationswerein fluxandgeneralinsecuritywas
growing,the membersof the 'non-dominant ethnicgroup' 'they' are is also not difficult. 'They' are recognizable
[in Englishin the originalGermantext] would see the as 'not we', most usually by colour or other physical
communityof languageandcultureas the ultimatecertain- stigmata,or by language. Where these signs are not ob-
ty, the unambiguously demonstrable value.Today,as the vious, subtler discriminationscan be made: Quebecois
system or plannedeconomyand social securitybreaks who refuse to understandanglophones who talk in a
down,once again- the situationis analogous- language
acts as a substitutefor factorsof integrationin a disin- Canadianaccent, will respond to anglophones who talk
tegratingsociety.Whensocietyfails,the nationappearsas with a British or US intonation,as Flemings who claim
theultimateguarantee. not to understandFrench spoken with a Belgian accent,
The situation in the ex-socialist societies and espe- understand French French. I am not sure how far,
cially in the ex-USSR is clear. Now that both the without these visible or audible marks of strangeness,
material framework and the routines of everyday life 'they' would be recognized by cultural differences,
have broken down, now that all the established values though in racist reactions much is made of such things:
are suddenly denied, what is the citizen of the USSR, how good Frenchmen are insulted by the smells of
what can he or she believe in? North African cooking, or good Brits by that of curry
Assuming the past is irrecoverable,the obvious fall- emanating from their neighbours. In fact, as the global
back positions are ethnicity and religion, singly or in expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurantssuggests,