Nationalism: What Is Affected By Race Or Ethnicity?

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Nationalism is a complex term, which refers to the consolidation of different national factors such as national identity, ideologies and national unity to create a unique image and identity for a community of people based on a geographical or demographic region (Geller and Breuilly, 2008:55). There were several ways to described and developed concept over time. While the traditional definition of nationalism focused on the division of people in different groups based on their birth affinity, the modern approach to the concept defines it as a phenomenon wherein modern societies tend to achieve a status quo (Hobsbawm, 2012:86). Moreover, Erk and Anderson (2009:191) have defined it as a practice via which the minority groups reach to the state …show more content…

Davidson (2000: 67) explains that nationalism usually results into the development of groups of people with similar ethnicity and cultural background. According to Davidson (Ibid), ethnicity leads to the development and creation of different groups of people based on different language, religion, culture, territory and even race. Thus, ethnicity and race are usually considered to be the two important items of nationalism. However, modern sociologists argued that it is not only ethnicity that causes nationalism, but there are several other factors that act as its antecedents. Hence, the study aims at evaluating if all nationalisms are based on either race or ethnicity or there are other forms of nationalism as …show more content…

The early ethnic groups that inhabited Britain consisted of Welsh, English, Irish and Scottish (Comaroff and Jean, 2009; 112). While academics have compared and correlated ethnic nationalism development in the Europe with Britain, Asari (2008: 16) argues that the development of nationalism in Europe was mainly due to different revolutions, but the development of nationalism in Britain was an outcome of a process that was carried out over a long period of time. Asari (Ibid) also explains that as the monarch was established in Britain, a complete English culture was established, which led to nationalism based on the race of people

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