Nationalisms and the New World Order
Author(s): Ernest Gellner
Source: Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 47, No. 5 (Feb., 1994),
pp. 29-36
Published by: American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3824450
Accessed: 04/02/2010 01:32
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Nationalisms and the New World Order
An Address by Ernest Gellner
Given at the January 1993 Conference on
"Emerging Norms of Justified Intervention"
We are living in a new world order follow-
ing events of 1989 and 1991. The context of
the discussion at this conference was the study
of international relations and their legal as-
pect, a realm in which norms are social reali-
ties and social realities (if they are strong
enough) are norms. That is not my habitual
milieu. This world is preoccupied with the
problem of military intervention and with the
criteria that do, or should, govern it. The
enemy (or disturbance to the order) is nation-
alism, along with fundamentalism. The two
share similar roots: Europe expresses certain
impulses through nationalism, the Middle
East through fundamentalism.
What is nationalism? The theory that na-
tionalism is self-evident or inherent in human
nature (like gender) is mistaken. There are
two other main theories: (1) nationalism is the
expression of dark, atavistic forces, and (2)
nationalism is a reflection of the basic social
organization of industrial and industrializing
people. (The former theory is, in my view,
mistaken; the latter correct.) Industrial soci-
ety, because it lives by economic growth, is
made legitimate by such growth (i.e., bribery
by economic improvement). It is therefore
committed to a mobile occupational structure
and powerful technology, whereby work be-
comes semantic (the manipulation of people
and symbols) and ceases to be physical (the
manipulation of things). At work people must
interact constantly with economic, political,
educational, and other bureaucracies. It fol-
lows that people's most important investment,
which alone grants them dignity, employabil-
ity, and acceptability (and even their human-
ity), is control over the idioms in which the
bureaucracies that surround them generally
operate. Without such control, life is a long
series of humiliations. If someone lacks such
Copyright ? 1993 by Ernest Gellner; reprinted by permission.
29