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Beyond the nation? Or back to it?

Current trends in the sociology of nations and nationalism

Daniel Chernilo

Abstract

This article critically reviews three of the most significant debates in the sociology of nations

and nationalism over the past 50 years: (1) the problem of methodological nationalism on

the main features of nation-states, (2) the tension between primordialism and modernism in

understanding the historicity of nations, and (3) the politics of nationalism between

universalism and particularism. These three debates help us clarify some key theses in our

long-term understanding of nations and nationalism: processes of nation and nation-state

formation are not opposed to but compatible with the rise of globalisation and non-state

forms of governance; the question ‘when is a nation’ combines modern and pre-modern

dimensions; the politics of nationalism is neither unfailingly democratic nor exclusively

regressive. A key paradox that unfolds is that all nations invest heavily in the production and

reproduction of their own exceptionalism.

Keywords: cosmopolitanism, globalisation, methodological nationalism, modernism, nation-

state, primordialism
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Writing about nations and nationalism just over 100 years ago, arguably the most insightful

contribution by Max Weber was a quizzing one: the nation is one of those key terms which,

although it is central to our comprehension of human communities, tends to defy clear

definitions. Weber did not write about the nation at any great length, but did comment on

how ideas of common language, history, religion, geography and the physical features of a

population had all been used already when trying to pin down the one feature that can

define a nation beyond question. Despite these attempts, scholars remained unable to

provide a clear understanding of it. Writing in the 1910s, the fact was not lost to Weber that

the national question was anything but a purely scholarly issue, because there was too much

at stake for those who were to become the nation’s bearers as well as for those who were

excluded and could not call the state ‘their own’. Wealth, military power, educational

opportunities, long-term cultural influence, and indeed life and death themselves, were to

become increasingly dependent on how national questions were to be answered (Weber

1970: 171-179).

In this paper, I should like to turn these difficulties upside down. I contend that Weber’s

challenges when seeking a general definition of the nation may help us unlock what remains

a genuinely fantastic feat of nations; namely, their worldwide success as the most significant

(though never unique!) socio-political formation of modern times. In explaining the

continuous rise of nations, ambiguities about who, how and when is a nation have greatly

contributed to their worldwide expansion. No nation has an automatic right to exist (ask

Moravians, Basques or the Cornish), nations do not necessarily have to create ‘their own’

states – think not only of Austro-Hungary, but also Belgium, and of course the UK itself. Yet

so many different groups all over the world have, over the past 150 years or so, made
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precisely those very claims (Malesevic 2019). 1 While Weber let go more than a hint of

frustration when writing about these ambiguities, this complexity remains central for us to

think about the futures of nationalism.

My starting point in this paper is that we ought to reconcile ourselves with this opacity of the

nation in modernity (Chernilo 2007). The problem is not so much that we are yet to fully

understand what a nation is in its ultimate complexity, rather, we ought to accept the fact

that nations are not fixed, stable and homogenous phenomena. Different features of nations

may, have and will continue to be highlighted under different circumstances. From threats of

external war to natural disasters and sporting success, flexibility and mutability remain the

nation’s most significant quality. The nation’s success in modern times depends on the fact

that it is able to accommodate and appeal to the different dimensions of social life.

The goal of my contribution to this special issue is to critically assess what I consider are the

most significant theoretical debates on nations and nationalisms over the past 50 years. In

particular, I concentrate on the following three: (1) the problem of methodological

nationalism, (2) the debate between primordialism and modernism, and (3) the politics of

nationalism. Each debate comprises an impressive body of scholarship to which full justice

cannot be given within these few pages. Yet in reviewing them together we are able to distil,

as it were, some substantive propositions that otherwise remain insufficiently articulated.

First, processes of nation and nation-state formation are not opposed to but are compatible

with the rise of globalisation and non-state forms of governance. Secondly, the question

‘when is a nation’ must combine modern and pre-modern factors. Finally, the politics of

nationalism is not unfailingly democratic but nor is it exclusively regressive, so we need an

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approach that is able to account for its particularistic and universalistic dimensions. A key

paradox that unfolds is that all nations invest heavily in the production and reproduction of

their own exceptionalism.

1. Methodological nationalism: The nation’s position in a global world

The debate on methodological nationalism has been one of the most significant ones in

terms of clarifying the main challenges of theorising national phenomena. 2 Methodological

nationalism can be defined as the equation between modern ideas of society, culture and

state in the social sciences and the historical formation of nation-states all over the world

since the end of the 18 th century. We encounter methodological nationalism when, implicitly

or otherwise, nation-states are treated as the natural and necessary form of organisation of

a successful modern society. Above all, methodological nationalism feeds off the banal

nationalism of everyday language and practices, whereby ‘countries’ and ‘societies’ are

talked about as if they naturally correspond to fully formed and homogenous nation-states

and without their core features ever being subject to critical scrutiny (Billig 1995). There are

three main difficulties that arise when looking at nation-states under the influence of

methodological nationalism:

 Nation-states appear as if they have developed endogenously, that is, they seem to have

an inner core that evolves from the inside out and leads to the formation of

‘independent’ states.

 Nation-states are seen as self-sufficient, that is, their cultural and political viability

depends on their ability to provide for themselves in all areas (i.e. the development of a

successful national ‘economy’, ‘culture’, ‘law’, etc.).

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 Nation-states are treated as inescapable, that is, as if their long-term historical continuity

– a remote past, some notion of its current crisis, and the promise of a bright future –

can and ought to be taken for granted.

When Portuguese sociologist Herminio Martins (1974) coined the term ‘methodological

nationalism’ in the 1970s, he did so on the back of the most recent wave of decolonisation

processes in Africa and South East Asia (Mozambique broke independent from Portugal in

1975). His argument was that newly independent countries were in fact trying to organise

themselves as modern nation-states, so to an important extent this did look as an adequate

description of empirical trends that were to find culmination in that part of the world at that

time.3 Within sociology, one may be forgiven for reading some kind of methodological

nationalism back into many modernisation theories that were current back then, as the only

proven road to modernity, it was thought, included the founding of those social and

economic institutions that had already proved successful in the developed world: universal

schooling, support for national industries and the internal market, an independent national

judiciary and the development of major infrastructure projects, such as ports, hospitals or

power-plants (Parsons 1971).

The 1970s critique of methodological nationalism made three crucial claims. First, it rejected

endogenous explanations about the development of nation-states, because accounts of

processes of nation-building and state-formation have to include global and as well local

trends. Secondly, it contended that because sociology’s historical emergence in the late 18 th

century coincided with the emergence of modern nation-states themselves, it may prove

hard for sociology to distance itself, let alone transcend, methodological nationalism. In
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other words, sociology was seen as fundamentally contaminated by the very nationalism

that was in need of explaining (Giddens 1973). Thirdly, it is worth remembering that, even at

this initial stage, this is a debate that never really was. Methodological nationalism was and

continues to be used as synonymous to reductionism and reification. Methodological

nationalism is a charge to be levelled against those who got nation-states wrong. It is a

shortcoming to be corrected and overcome rather than an outlook to be promoted or

defended as part of one’s own conceptual or historical framework.

The end of the Cold War moved the focus away from nationalism and onto the globalisation

of both capitalism and liberal democracy as the two key developments that were to usher in

not only a new era of human history but its very end (Fukuyama 1989). Yet nationalism was

never really far off. On the one hand, the development of successful nation-states was still

seen as a precondition for the new holy marriage between liberal capitalism and liberal

democracy. On the other, as more people were expected to embrace economic and political

freedoms, the prediction was that we were to witness the rise of ever more civic, inclusive

and ultimately liberal versions of nationalism (Lind 1994). Yet by the end of the 1990s the

remarkable resilience of nationalism was back in full view. While some nations became

nation-states through remarkably peaceful processes (as in the secession between Czechs

and Slovaks in 1993), there were also such dramatic catastrophes as Kosovo in 1998-1999. A

new wave of the debate on methodological nationalism now centred on how globalisation,

understood as real-time economic exchanges, ubiquitous information technologies, and

increased mobility of people, was eroding modernity’s twentieth-century national imaginary.

Empirically, the argument was that globalisation had the potential to soften the prevalence

of nationalism in the modern world, whereas normatively this decline was seen as a cause
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for celebration because of the wholly regressive nature of nationalism (Beck 2002). In fact,

mainstream sociology found it nearly impossible to see past this rather simplistic

‘globalisation-cosmopolitanism good / nationalism bad’. There is no doubt that there was

much to celebrate in a renewed commitment to cosmopolitan values – not least in relation

to ideas of universal human rights and the rule of law at the international level (Fine 2007).

More problematic, however, is the extent to which this was attempted through a renewed

demonization of nationalism, or at best as a zero-sum game between a closed nationalistic

mindset and the openness of cosmopolitan commitments. Yet it remained crucial that

nationalism’s more progressive side – its egalitarianism, its ability to mobilise social

solidarity, its democratic potential, among others – continues to be given its due (Calhoun

1999). I will come back to this normative discussion in the last section of the article.

If in the 1970s the main blind-spot of the critique of methodological nationalism was that

the path towards a successful modernisation for new nation-states should not have been

taken for granted, a main shortcoming of the globalisation literature was the extent to which

it undervalued the nation’s resilience and capacity for popular mobilisation and self-renewal.

Our current situation is more complex, perhaps, but not altogether different. As anti-colonial

struggles are less prevalent now than they once were, the global push towards the creation

of new nation-states seems to have slowed down. Yet processes of nation-building and

state-formation in the 19th and 20th centuries consisted not only in the fight against colonial

rule but included also the ‘internal’ homogenisation of populations into the cultural identity

of the majority group. As national ideals expanded and became themselves global, then

formerly oppressed groups are now able to couch their demands within the framework of

national self-determination. These are appealing terms within the global community
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because so many nation-states are themselves a result of similar trajectories and have used

similar ideas. In cases like Taiwan, Hong Kong or Kurdistan, the refusal to acknowledge the

self-determination of these groups as nations is based on the opposition from sovereign

states that deny them their identity as a unique nation and their right to become a separate

nation-state. Yet the normative legitimacy of their claims for autonomy readily resonates

with national histories and trajectories all over the world. Whether and why these claims to

independence are accepted or rejected, this is less to do with their intrinsic normative

appeal as claims to national self-determination than with the Realpolitik of inter-state

relations.

At the same time, transnational experiments like the European Union remain a global rarity

and have not triggered similar developments in other parts of the world. Even if we take the

EU’s own internal problems as no more than normal adjustments in a process of

transnationalisation that was always going to be difficult and take time, we do not find

comparable trends elsewhere towards the redefinition of economic and political

sovereignty. To be sure, the past three decades have witnessed the development of a novel

architecture of international organisations with new layers of global governance in areas as

different as sport, commercial law or the environment (Teubner 2012). Their institutional

innovations are significant in their own right, not least as they play a major role in the

tackling of global issues. They have also found ways to complement, circumvent and

enhance further regulations with which nation-states are unable or at times unwilling to

comply. But there remains one key dimension these new institutions do not go into: they

refrain from competing against the fundamental political tenets of state sovereignty.

Intendedly or otherwise, regimes of global governance seem to have reinforced the view
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that political autonomy, in the form of national self-determination, is the one thing that

modern nation-states alone can offer.

2. Primordialism and modernism: On the contentious historicity of nations

When the field of nationalism studies was established in the mid-1980s, it cohered around

the question about the origins of nations. Nations were seen as either ancestral, primal,

forms of human communities, or else they were understood as modern and having emerged

only in the second half of the 18 th eighteenth century – that is, more or less in the way this is

described in the debate on methodological nationalism we have just reviewed. While at the

time the debate was personalised in the works of Ernst Gellner (1997) for the modernists,

and of his former doctoral student, Anthony D. Smith (1986), for the primordialist camp, the

intervention that arguably launched the modern field of nationalism studies had been made

some time before by German historian Hans Kohn (1961 [1944]).

For a Jewish émigré who was living in the US at the time of World War II, Kohn upheld a

surprisingly benign view of the role of nationalism in recent history. He was mostly positive

about its role in the development of the democratic and egalitarian politics of the past 150

years. Kohn also argued that nations are transhistorical entities and saw them as ancestral

communities that have carried people’s sense of belonging throughout history. His main

insight, however, deserves more attention than is often granted: nations as cultural markers

are old and traditional, but nationalism as a political ideology is not. As arguments moved

from thick primordialism to softer versions of ethno-symbolism, and the modernist approach

proved more in tune with mainstream social science, Kohn’s views inevitably fell out of

fashion.
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For modernism, nations are quintessentially novel phenomena that result directly from the

social and economic transformations that social scientists conventionally use in order to

explain the rise of modernity in the past 250 years. From the printing press and the

expansion of vernacular languages, via universal schooling and conscription, to industrialism

and the mass media, nations became increasingly understood as that imaginary community

that did not exist before modern times and had to be purposefully created (Anderson 1991,

Hobsbawm 1994). The more nationalism studies became integrated into mainstream social

science – in sociology, politics and IR, but also in history and cultural studies – the modernist

predisposition of these disciplines made itself felt in their own understandings of the nation

(Delanty and Kumar 2006). The thesis that nations are exclusively modern inventions

unquestionably ‘won’ the debate (Coackley 2018, Hutchinson 2019).

Modern nations are indeed unique and have changed dramatically over the past two

centuries. But given that this predicament of rapid and radical social change is central to

how the social sciences look at all areas of social life, it would be unreasonable to contend

that social and cultural identities had not undergone significant transformations during this

same time. In other words, modernism still struggles with Weber’s difficulties in how to

account exactly for the rise and main features of nations. Some nations have evolved

internally because such organic transformations as processes of class differentiation and

linguistic homogenisation. Others have changed mostly through external factors, for

instance, as they havebeen taken over by more powerful nations. And there are other

nations that may be described as altogether new, as their current identities are mostly the

result of struggles against traditional ones. Material and ideal factors, political and cultural
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dimensions, all compete for the role of being the necessary condition for the alleged

modernity of nations. If the modernist outlook is nowadays nearly consensual within

mainstream social science, it is also rather bland consensus because it does not tell us a

great deal about nations beyond the fact they are indeed modern.

Building on what we discussed in the previous section on methodological nationalism, I

suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to both the historical continuities and

discontinuities of nations. The idea of the nation as a sociocultural entity that was

homogeneous enough in some though significant regards was already common occurrence,

for instance, during Roman times (Goodman 2007). A nation referred back then to a

linguistic, ethnic or religious community that was relatively autonomous before Rome’s

unrelenting expansion. To that extent at least, nations were known by: (a) their relatively

clear geographical location (though it was not at all necessary that each nation had to have

‘its own’ exclusive territory), and (b) some cultural traits with the help of which they could

be identified (laws and religious practices mattered, as did foodstuffs, music, handicrafts or a

sense of fashion). On both counts, the key was that nations demonstrated significant

internal coherence that could be displayed in front of other nations. If this is the case, then

much of the endurance of contemporary nations may hang on what are the main factors

that we in the present decide to emphasise in order to account for either their ancient roots

or their recent emergence. To ask whether first century Gauls, Britons and Teutons are ‘the

same’ groups as contemporary French, English and German ‘nations’ is the wrong question

and does not have an unequivocal answer. Nations are resilient because, above all else, they

display a fantastic ability to hide their own mutations underneath a cloud of stability. In

antiquity, in the late middle-ages, and also now in the present, they are always elusive to pin
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down (Elias 1997). Most nations that claim to be one and only homogenous group are likely

to be challenged internally by one or another minority, whose own national status they

contend has been unduly usurped. To put it succinctly, nations are neither created ex-nihilo

in modernity via industrialisation or the building of state institutions but nor are we to

understand them as an automatic or necessary reflex from an ancient past.

I should like to highlight three implications of these reflections for the contemporary

sociology of nationalism. First, national identities themselves were of course one of the key

dimensions of social life that underwent huge transformations with the rise of modernity.

But they only did so alongside many of the other factors that have also shaped modern

societies: their class structure, bureaucratic institutions, mass media systems, international

organisations, or technological innovations. If nations change, they do so in conjunction with

all these other dimensions. To this extent at least, the idea that nations are a modern

invention is somewhat of an oxymoron because it merely states the obvious fact that the

identities of human groups change when the groups themselves change. Modernism

illuminates as much as hides the actual historical trends and causal relations that we ought

to study in order to understand the rise of nations.

Secondly, we should insist on the fact that while nations are not specifically modern,

nations-states are. This is in fact the core belief of methodological nationalism: nations have

to have their own state, a nation’s fate hangs principally on whether it is able to create and

then maintain a state only for itself, national sovereignty must remain undivided, a nation’s

strength depends on its internal homogeneity, and the most ‘perfect’ form of international

organisation is one that is neatly divided into formally equivalent nation-states. All these
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ideas are modern, yet the fact that nations are a significant social and cultural marker, that

nations are a vehicle for political mobilisation and that nations are symbolic resources

through which others make sense of practices and beliefs that are not their own, all of these

are historical trends that greatly predate modern times. In other words, the reification of the

nation appears to be as much of a challenge for primordialists as it is for modernists. The

former are prone to overstate the continuity of nations as transhistorical communities, wile

the latter focus on their past historical discontinuity but then locate nation-building as the

telos of modernity itself. The historisation of the nation within modernism works only until

‘modern’ nation-states arose, which is something that nearly always happened at some

point in the second half of the 18th century. From that moment on, however, modernism

pays the price of its past historical flexibility in the hard currency of the reification of nations

in the present and for the future.

The third and final implication is the remainder that we should not overestimate the nation’s

internal homogeneity. Rather the opposite, internal diversity is not only the norm but an

essential factor for a nation’s long-term viability. A sense of national identity is not a

universal phenomenon throughout human history and the modernist case hangs on the view

that, to the extent that national identities existed at all before modernity, it was just an elite

phenomenon. Peasants, they insist, would hardly have a sense of national identity before

the late eighteenth century at the earliest (Weber 1976). But this equation between

nationalism and the egalitarian politics of modern times has its own shortcomings, not least

the fact that slaves were arguably amongst the most mobile populations of the ancient and

early modern world and were well aware of these social markers. Neither class

differentiation within the nation nor the possibility of upholding several nationalities
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simultaneously was lost to people in the global cities of the ancient world. Insofar as national

belonging became defined as a civic status rather than as an ethnic one, slaves who gained

freedom, wealthy immigrants, successful generals and even intellectuals could

simultaneously become members of a particular nation and a Roman citizen (Goodman

2007).

A tension between cultural diversity and cultural homogeneity is built into all ideas of the

nation – ancient as well as modern. The ways in which this finds expression has of course

changed over time. Language, food, religion, and comparisons to migrant populations have

all been used, depending on circumstances, to soften or heighten a sense of national

uniqueness. In modern times, these are mobilised politically by state institutions and elites

themselves. But the definition of cultural identities through an appeal to the nation is not as

such a modern occurrence.

3. The politics of nationalism: Between universalism and particularism

The past decade has witnessed the rise of a new wave of right-wing nationalisms all over the

world and it is clear that a chauvinism lies at the core of their politics. The threat of cultural

disintegration, together with the view that national industries and workplaces need

protection against foreign intrusion, are key to xenophobic discourses that cohere around

deeply particularistic understandings of the nation. In fact, during most of the 19 th and 20th

centuries, the conventional way of looking at the interrelations between national

sovereignty and international forms of jurisdiction was that of a zero-sum game (Bull 1977):

given that states monopolise the ability to deploy the police against their own populations,

and military might against foreign powers, any ‘concession’ to international institutions was
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seen as a surrender of national sovereignty. If sovereign states are the only subject to be

recognised within conventional forms of international law, then any restriction to their

powers was to be seen as a temporary evil at best, or as a betrayal to the nation itself at

worst. A highly particularistic understanding of national sovereignty has prevailed in practice

for the best part of the four-hundred years – the so-called Westphalian model (Jackson

1999). At the same time, however, a universalistic orientation is also central to the

normative discourse of modernity. It is connected to what we may refer to as a

cosmopolitan outlook that favours such ideas as an international human rights regime that

includes not only states as subjects of international law but individuals as well (Kant 1999).

Human rights are rights that all humans have without the need for any additional

qualification: they precede and transcend the particularism of national identifications

(Donnelly 1993).

My main argument for this last section of the article is that, in order to understand the

politics of nationalism, we cannot look at it only as a form of particularistic politics but must

also include the universalistic dimension of the cosmopolitanism (Delanty 2006). I build on

Jürgen Habermas’s view that while nationalism does have a regressive side, we have to be

able to grasp its more progressive, universalistic side as well: ‘The nation is Janus-faced (…)

The tension between the universalism of an egalitarian legal community and the

particularism of a community united by historical destiny is built into the very concept of the

national state’ (Habermas 1998: 115). For contemporary sociology to be able to account for

the current revival of nationalistic politics, it needs to move beyond a merely regressive view

of nations and nationalisms. Their democratic appeal is far from flawless – it is often tenuous

and is hypocritical at worst. But sociology has the analytical duty to pay equal attention to
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discriminatory practices of nation-building and to its role in the realisation of democratic

aspirations. Both play a role in the continuous significance of nationalism and nation-states

themselves.

In order to do this, I suggest that we look at nationalism and cosmopolitanism in both their

particularistic and universalistic moments. Nationalism and cosmopolitanism are not the

opposite poles of a continuum but are best seen as complex incarnations of universalistic

ideas of openness, inclusivity and self-determination, on the one hand, and particularistic

notions of competitive states and mutually exclusive identities, on the other. For brevity, I

focus on what I consider are the four main combinations between nationalism,

cosmopolitanism, universalism and particularism. The aim is, hopefully, to offer a more

nuanced understanding of the politics of nationalism.

a. Nationalism and particularism

The particularistic dimension of the nation emphasises that national identities are a key

cultural marker of modern times and that national sovereignty is a key dimension of modern

politics. All nations claim to have elements that make them unique and homogeneous and,

because of that, these are central in any group’s claim about its unique status as a nation.

The nation is seen as the one idea that is able to give coherence to social life as a whole, the

prime object of political loyalty and the one for which any and all sacrifices are worth

making. This may explain why such issues as multiple national commitments are construed

as threats to the nation’s sovereignty and thus define a particularistic view of the nation. 4 In

fact, nationalistic political discourses make a dual move here: on the one hand, they claim

that the nation’s core is clearly identifiable while avoiding making explicit what that core
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actually is – thence people can remain loyal to the nation without ever having to define

precisely what is that object of loyalty. On the other hand, the nation appears to welcome

internal diversity as a show of strength and resilience, but this diversity is only allowed if it

remains wholly subordinated to national belonging and loyalty.

These are the ideas that nowadays define more extreme forms of right-wing politics. They

offer a narrow understanding of the nation that define it in the way that primordialists and

methodological nationalism have done it before: nations are wholly autochthonous vis-à-vis

modern trends and wholly self-contained vis-à-vis external influences. In Hungary and in the

US, in the Philippines, Brazil and Myanmar, the contemporary resurgence of nationalism has

moved closer to these highly particularistic ideas. In addition to their focus on notions of a

glorious past and cultural belonging, the continuous salience of nation-states has also to do

with their call for autonomy and self-determination: the normative promise of becoming the

real masters of our destiny.

b. Nationalism and universalism

A key normative dimension of national politics is the extent to which it allows members to

participate in its collective decision-making. Here, the egalitarian and self-determining values

that are central in the Enlightenment’s normative imaginary – citizens as co-nationals who

are free and equal in rights and duties – are key to the ways in which nations have

succeeded in mobilising peoples’ loyalties and commitments all over the world. To be sure,

whether and how these inclusive values are actually realised in modern politics is very much

contested. We do know that processes of inclusion into the nation have exclusionary

dynamics built into them: for some to become members of the nation, there are others who
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would have to be left outside. Yet most modern nations have had at some point in their

political history a foundational moment that they see as crucially inclusive and democratic.

This is how the class politics that developed of the 19 th century led to the widening of the

political franchise, and it is also how the gender politics of the 20 th century eventually led to

women’s universal right to vote. Modern ideas of the nation possess an egalitarian thrust

that is a key part of its continuous appeal for fighting against oppression, inequality and

injustice (Mann 1993). If we accept that a moment of collective self-determination is central

to the appeal of modern nations, this means that a democratic component – however

incomplete – cannot be fully eradicated from them (Tamir 1993).

In fact, the everyday life of most nations is not characterised by extreme forms of

exclusionary or xenophobic politics (Malesevic 2013). On the contrary, normative discourses

on national belonging tend to move towards the centre: they bring about some sense of

closure, draw some substantive differences between nationals, foreigners and denizens, and

invest significant resources in their own reproduction as independent nations. Equally,

nations seek participation in all kinds of international organisations, which inevitably means

the softening of their otherwise sacrosanct ideas of absolute sovereignty. Nations welcome

mild forms of external influence and appreciation from beyond their borders. As they seek to

foster people’s commitments to some form of democratic participation, this may also help

explain why so many forms of international solidarity are equally built around national

attachments (Brunkhorst 2005).

c. Cosmopolitanism and universalism

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A cosmopolitan outlook is explicitly committed to a universalistic idea of human rights and

the notion that all human beings without exception belong to the same species. Its

institutional incarnation in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is of course a

direct result of the crimes against humanity that were committed during World War II, but

ideas of universal humanity are neither only modern nor only Western (Joas 2015). They

have transcultural roots and evolved autonomously in all major world religions during the

so-called Axial Age between 400 BCE and 400 CE (Voegelin 2000). Furthermore, the early

idea of cosmopolitanism as a world citizen was explicitly defined in opposition to the notion

of being only the citizen of a particular political community. In fact, it explicitly responded to

a universalistic call as well (Hammond 1951). The historical emergence of early

cosmopolitanism was already a result of the relatively enhanced awareness of sociocultural

diversity at that time, it was an act of social and political imagination in relation to key

cultural questions such as identity and belonging (Koselleck 2004). If this is the case, then the

early cosmopolitan outlook can be seen as a kind of critique of methodological nationalism

avant la lettre – i.e. a critique of the idea that identity-formation must recourse to divisive

and exclusionary practices and values. It was also a critique of the notion that political self-

determination can be realised only through particularistic politics.

In its contemporary versions, cosmopolitanism’s universalism does not promote the view of

a centralized world polity nor, as said, sees human rights and national sovereignty as a zero

sum-game: we can and should see autonomous nation-states and strong human rights

regimes as mutually compatible (Gregg 2016). National identities complement with all other

kinds of personal and social identities – not least because a plurality of identities is one key

feature that defines the kind of beings that humans actually are (Archer 2000).
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d. Cosmopolitanism and particularism

If the universalist side of cosmopolitanism finds its inspiration in the tradition of moral

philosophy, its particularistic side is closer to history and sociology itself. Here, one possible

genealogy traces cosmopolitanism back to its imperialist roots and looks at whether and

how the cosmopolitan programme has been instrumentalised for the purposes of neo-

colonialism (Wallerstein 2007). In its European version, ideas of peace, democracy and

freedom can very much be couched in the language of cosmopolitanism while deployed

cynically for neo-imperial ends (Douzinas 2000).

A more positive contribution of the particularistic moment of cosmopolitanism has to do

with the decentring of the nation as modernity’s most important form of socio-cultural

identity. As we saw in the section on methodological nationalism, this coincides with the

critique of the nation as the natural and necessary container of modern social life. Empirical

sociological studies on cosmopolitanism emphasise openness towards diversity, acceptance

of different value-orientations and the ability to critically self-reflect on one’s own traditions.

Cosmopolitanism is thus defined as a ‘cultural disposition’ that makes it more likely to reflect

critically on whether, and through which historical processes, our national practices and

customs have become institutionalised in the states of which we are currently citizens

(Woodward et al 2008). This may perhaps be seen as a counter-narrative to the official

national histories under which schoolchildren are socialised: a cosmopolitanism from below,

as it were, that neither reifies the nation’s accomplishments nor hides away from its

atrocities (Cicchelli 2018). Crucially, what makes this form of self-reflection a cosmopolitan

one is the extent to which it marks a total break with particularistic nationalism: we live in a
 21

world where multiple nationalities co-exist not only within and across nations but within

individuals and communities themselves.

Conclusion

If we go back to Weber’s insight 100 years ago, it looks as though he got it right when he

argued that nations resist simple definitions. During the past century, we have observed that

nations constantly re-narrate their history, reconfigure their main symbols and redefine the

limits of their sovereignty in order to tackle their current challenges. A nation’s core remains

mutable and cannot definitively be pinned down, so it is wrong to see nations as inevitably

backward, insular, and narrow-minded. In making the case for their exceptionalism, nations

find compromises between their autonomy and their necessary relations to the world

outside.

Nations also invest heavily in tracing their roots back to an ancient past and they do so in

order to make this past relevant to contemporary circumstances. Yet these ‘national

histories’ often presuppose the autonomous units they are meant to discover, so the very

search for premodern ancestry distorts the alleged purity of that past. If this is the case, then

the most significant sociological question is not whether it is possible to speak about nations

before the 18th century but we need instead inquire into how exactly the collective identities

we now refer to as nations have evolved over time. We need to look at the extent to which a

sense of common identity does not have to translate necessarily into cultural homogeneity

and political autonomy. Nations are modern because they have changed dramatically

alongside modern times and they are ancient because for most nations some of their roots

lie outside modernity. A key paradox the sociology of nationalism must be able to grasp is
 22

that nations are deeply committed to the production and reproduction of their own

exceptionalism.

The growth in the international flows of peoples, goods and media contents, the climate

crisis, transatlantic conflicts, and the rise of institutions of transnational governance are all

trends that raise legitimate doubts on the narrative about the continuous rise of nations.

There is no need to predict any ‘definitive’ decline of nation-states for us having to

reconsider the different roles nations are playing in the global scene. Few contended at the

turn of the past century that the resurgence of extreme forms of nationalism was around the

corner, however, and events of the past decade make milder, more universalistic, aspects of

nationalism look dramatically underwhelming. But if the pendulum has swung too radically

towards the particularistic side of nationalism in the past fifteen years, the sociology of

nations and nationalism would be ill advised to respond to these trends with accounts that

are equally one-sided. Nations and nationalism do have a parochial, exclusivist and

xenophobic side but cannot be reduced to these alone. Questions of autonomy and self-

determination, of belonging and identity, are complex and multi-layered. Nationalism needs

not and must not be reduced to a one-size-fits-all type of regressive politics.

Looking at the relationships between particularism and universalism allows us to explore

how notions of ‘the people’ underscore both the universal and the particular side of

politically organised groups. Nations are collectives who share some common features and,

on that basis, decide to take common ownership of their destiny. Their relationship to

democracy is far from fool-proof: it can be weakened, falsified, betrayed and be turned into

a murderous weapon against minorities. But in the constitution of most modern nation-
 23

states, the appeal to collective self-determination is a key dimension that fosters its

democratic potential. Nationalism’s progressive side shows that nations have been a main

resource in the development of class consciousness, gender inclusion, welfare provision and

even international solidarity itself. Furthermore, civic and inclusive forms of nationalism

remain a democratic aspiration in many parts of the world. When sociology focuses

excessively or even exclusively on the nation’s particularism, it loses sight of nationalism’s

own complex social and political history. For long periods in the 19 th and 20th centuries, and

indeed in most parts of the world, nationalist parties allied themselves with progressive and

democratic politics (Manela 2007).

The sociology of nations and nationalism must resist the temptation of projecting backwards

ideal notions of a wholly democratic nation so as to normalise the nation’s troubled history

of violence, discrimination and exclusion. Nation-building, state formation, and violent

conflict do attract each other, and their combined record is a highly troubled one (Moore

1967). Yet the sociology of nationalism must equally resist the reification of the nation’s

exclusionary dimension as permanent, unsurmountable or all-encompassing. It should not

project the nation’s current difficulties forward and turn it into the main culprit of everything

that is wrong in the world today. It is precisely during difficult times, such as our own, that

sociology ought to be able to keep playing the reflexive role of reminding us that national

politics is always unstable: it changes and evolves over time. Whatever trend may now seem

to have won the day is likely to change in the future. This recurrence is perhaps one of the

very few constants of the history of modern nations and nationalism.

1
Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Marco Antonsich, the editors of this special issue, and three anonymous reviewers for
extremely helpful comments to earlier versions of this article.

Notes
Take as a simple indicator the constant growth of membership of international organisations such as the UN.
See: https://www.un.org/en/sections/member-states/growth-united-nations-membership-1945-
present/index.html.
2
Here I only highlight some representative works within different social sciences. In sociology: Chernilo (2006,
2007, 2011) Beck (2002), Pendenza (2014) and Turner (2006); in international relations: Rosenberg (2005); in
social psychology: Billig (1995); in memory studies: Bekus (2018); in migration studies: Wimmer and Schiller
(2002); in history: Vasilev (2019); in political theory: Sager (2016); in political economy: Pradella (2014); in
geography: Antonsich (2009); for nationalism studies: Storm (2015).
3
Given that most Latin American states were formally independent by the 1830s, this historical trajectory of
nation-building continues to show a severe Eurocentric bias (Miller 2006).
4
As in classic anti-Semitic tropes of Jews being duplicitous and disloyal. See Fine and Spencer (2017).

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