Essay On Nationalism

Nationalism is an elusive concept and there is the need to classify the variety of ideologies and movements in order to understand nationalism. It is also important to appreciate the underlying reality of a nation in the creation of nationalism. Although there are those who argue that the nation exists only in the imagination and that it can be deconstructed away, nations an nationalism are sociologically real notwithstanding that its reality is different from the understanding of nationalists themselves. Nations and nationalism are also modern occurrences as the basic features of the modern world need nations and nationalism. Nationalism did not exist before the eighteenth century. Although a few nations could be found before the beginning

It provides the legitimation of states all over the world and is the most accepted ideology. It is also noteworthy that most of the world’s conflicts have strong nationalist elements.

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Nationalism is a movement that works to attain and maintain unity, autonomy and the identity of human population. A nation is a human population that shares a common historical territory, pubic culture, common myths, common rights and a single economy. This implies that a nation the concept of a nation denotes a kind of community with a shared culture and history. This meaning is the assumption adopted by nationalists who see the world as being made up of unique communities and culture, which the citizens owe loyalty and is the only source of political power and individual freedom.

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The concept of a nation is different from that of a state. A state is an autonomous public institution that exists within a recognised territory. States are legal and political concepts and are not communities. The rise of the states in different part off the world preceded the rise of nationalism and nations.

The first problem concerts the generality of these theories. Although they provide a convincing explanation of nationalism, they are usually based on a level of abstraction that they cannot be easily applied to other areas or cases. They appear to cover many things but using them to locate historical instances often invokes outstanding circumstances such as religious factors, ethnic antagonism and colour. The second issue with modernist theories is that their materialism is quite misleading. This is because nationalism can exist in a wide range of socioeconomic settings ranging from rich settings to poor settings as well as in pre-industrialised and the industrialised conditions. It is also difficult to explain the intensity and the content of particular nationalism through the workings of global capitalism. The third and the most crucial problem with the modernist theories is the claim that nationalism is a product of modernisation. This claim overlooks ethnic and cultural ties in most parts of the world and the significance of these factors.

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Ethno symbolic approaches provide that nationalism cannot be understood without reference to earlier ethnic ties and memories. Many nations have been based on ethnicities and examples of these nations include England, France, Sweden and Holland. Ethnic ties are also components of many national communities. This approach is