Nationalism and Racism

[NIKOS GOUSGOUNIS]

What can be the direct and indirect relations of nationalism and racism ? This seems to be a good topic for starting a discussion.

[John Postill]

Can you give us an example, Nikos?

[NIKOS GOUSGOUNIS]

Hi John

nice to see u here

I am copying your post of your blog related to nationalism and I wait from other members of this group to comment what of these examples that u cite as ethnic -national identity manifestations, could also be classified or interpretated as RACIST..In my opinion recism starts where nationalism is finishing.

>Ethnic and national identities: an anthropological outreach
>My recent encounters with Galician and other Spanish nationalists (both pro- and anti-Spain) on the blogosphere, >YouTube and elsewhere have got me thinking about the need to do some theoretical outreach. This is because the >things I hear from both sides of the divide sound to me very dated, oddly very mid-nineteenth century. Don’t ask me how >best to go about this, I’m only just starting to think about it and the issues are far from simple. Let me start with one or >two things we know about ethnic and national identity – but do please interrupt me if I ramble as I think aloud:

>1. As a result of migration, intermarriage, war, interethnic contact, trade, mass schooling and a myriad other factors, a >lot of people around the world today (in 2009) have a mixed ethnic, national and/or religious background. I have no >figures to hand, but let me instead offer an anecdote for now, while I go and find them. When I was in secondary school >near Madrid circa 1980, a teacher asked our overcrowded classroom (40+ souls) whether any of us had four >grandparents who came from Madrid. Only one of us, Carlos Gomez Caño aka ”Caño”, came forth. The rest of us? >Typical Madrileños, products of the huge waves of immigration that hit Madrid during the Franco era. Madrid is known, of >course, as Spain’s breakwater (el rompeolas de España).

>2. Peoples, ethnic groups, nations, etc, have no ’soul’, no ‘essence’; this is just a Romantic fantasy – they have >histories of sociopolitical change and continuity, linguistic and other cultural commonalities (as well as inner >differences), but not souls or essences.

>3. Although identity is not always as fluid or situated or blurred as many social theorists influenced by postmodernism >wish it were, neither is it as fixed and certain as nationalists would like it to be. Our social identities are a composite of >parental, peer group, educational, mediated, and other biographical influences – a composite fashioned in part by our >own agency as knowing beings.

>4. Having multiple identities is not only perfectly possible, it can also be great fun. We are used to hearing, for example, >about Northern Ireland’s deep ethnoreligious cleavage. What people tend to forget, though, is that a Northern Irish sports >fan may well find herself supporting Northern Ireland in one sport (e.g. soccer), Ireland in another (rugby), Britain and >Ireland in another (Lions’ rugby team), Great Britain in another (the Olympics), Europe in yet another (golf, Europe vs. >the USA), and so on. Northern Ireland is today de facto (but not de jure) simultaneously in the UK and in the Republic of >Ireland, apart from being its own province and an integral part of the EU. Multiple identities that we don’t often hear about.

[Jolanda Lindenberg]

Hi John & Nikos,
Nice discussion going here. I am currently working in Belgium and dealing with issues of nationalism (or subnationalism). I like your elaboration Nikos. I think it shows several issues
- the contextual nature of nationalism, e.g. which persons are present, which group are you in, where are you etc.
- multiple identities (but I think it is interesting to note the different levels at play as well)
- primordialism and instrumentalism
I do not want to get an old debate starting, but since Nikos raised the issue of racism, I just thought this should be mentioned. Of course the relationship between nationalism and racism is quite strong, in some cases stronger than others but emic primordialism is quite common. In Belgium, like in other countries, many people discussed differences in mentalities and souls, but again one should watch in which situation and with what purpose. I think that as researchers our challenge is to exactly analyze that. Now what I find interesting in this issue, an issue which actually came up in a colloquium after reading work of our colleague Andrea Riester on Burkina Faso, is how do we researchers reify, or reiterate emic conceptualizations of nationalism? how to deal with this without actually contributing to it? Although I might have some suggestions I'd like to hear your responses!

[John Postill]

Hi both

This is huge area of research and discussion, both academic and public.

If I can take up for now etic (scholarly) as opposed to emic conceptualisations, I would suggest we keep racism, nationalism and xenophobia analytically distinct. In some contexts all three may overlap, in others they can be quite distinct, or only two may overlap. Someone from country X may be racist towards fellow citizens of country X who he/she regards as belonging to a different 'race', e.g. white, black, Asian, etc.That same individual - and those who are like-minded - may or may not be nationalistic. Some white supremacists, for instance, may stress 'race' or 'stock' over nationality.

On the other hand, it is possible to be nationalistic without being racist. For instance, Catalan or Galicician nationalists do not frame their political and cultural demands in racial terms: they regard themselves as a nation (or people) with a unique language and culture, but do not use a racist (or even racialist) discourse.

Finally, although nationalism and xenophobia (the fear or dislike of foreigners) often go hand in hand, they are not the same thing. It is logically possible to be a nationalist (e.g. of the Romantic variety) without being a xenophobe, e.g. you love your 'nation' and expect foreigners to love their nations, too, in their own foreign ways.

The question posed by Jolanda is tricky as you're often dealing with committed nationalists who use scholarship to pursue their dreams. I'll have to give it some thought but look forward to reading other posts on this.

[NIKOS GOUSGOUNIS]

• In recent studies about leadership, I discovered the term ALLOPHILIA as an alternative for tolerance or an antonym of various prejudices mainly related to xenophobia and fear for the unknown Other. The typical remedy for prejudice is to bring conflicting groups into a state of tolerance. However, tolerance is not the logical antithesis of prejudice, but rather is the midpoint between negative feelings and positive feelings toward others. Thus the introduction of allophilia—positive intergroup attitudes—as an anchor, identifies a new domain for theory, research, and practice: allophilia enhancement. All these are formulated by T.L. Pittinsky in the last 3-4 years and make me think that the question raised by Jolanda ( how do we researchers reify, or reiterate emic conceptualizations of nationalism +how to deal with this without actually contributing to it ) is quite difficult to respond because in the reality what WE researchers are doing subconsciously is to TOLERATE emic conceptualizations of nationalism as pronounced by OTHERS under the thought that we keep an objective ( etic) attitude but the final result of this attitude of ours is of course the prolification of the xenophobic or emic sentiments or negative ( under what criterium really ?) intergroup attitudes that we observe but cannot alterate. So, the inicial question as put by a ( black I suppose and for this reason sensibilised) colleague of Burgina Fasso and transferred here by Jolanda, needs a longer analysis. My suspect is that racism is always waiting at the corner of the way leading from tolerance ( emic conceptualizations of others’ nationalism) to real nationalism as practiced by the others ( etic conceptualisation conscious or subconscious).
Racism is not only the concept of racial superiority of a given ethnic group as its traditional image stays. Bolstered by some nationalist and ethnocentric values and achievements of choice, this concept of racial superiority evolved to distinguish from other cultures, that were considered inferior or impure. This emphasis on culture corresponds to the modern mainstream definition of racism: "Racism does not originate from the existence of ‘races’. It creates them through a process of social division into categories: anybody can be racialised, independently of their somatic, cultural, religious differences." This definition explicitly ignores the fiery polemic on the biological concept of race, still subject to scientific debate. In the words of David C. Rowe "A racial concept, although sometimes in the guise of another name, will remain in use in biology and in other fields because scientists, as well as lay persons, are fascinated by human diversity, some of which is captured by race."
References
• Pittinsky, T. L. (2005). Allophilia and intergroup leadership. In N. Huber & M. Walker (Eds.), Building Leadership Bridges: Emergent Models of Global Leadership. College Park, Maryland: International Leadership Association.
•
• Pittinsky, T. L. & Rosenthal, S. A. (2006). Moving Beyond Tolerance: Factors and Measurement of Allophilia. Manuscript in preparation.
National Analytical Study on Racist Violence and Crime, RAXEN Focal Point for ITALY - Annamaria Rivera [2]
• ^ David C. Rowe in Heredity 87 (2001) 254-255 : Book review on The Emperor's New Clothes: biological theories of race at the new millennium. Joseph L. Graves Jr. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey. 2001, ISBN 0-8135-2847-X) [3]

[BHKTOP POMANOB]

Hi Jolanda,

Thanks for your contibution, it is a very interesting work you're doing in Belgium.
Could you post some more examples of this emic primordialism, which I find quite interesting issue.
Regarding to the discussion opened here bi Nikos, I'd like to start saying and quoting you, since he brought up the subject, that the particular issue of racism, in my opinion, must be very carefully handled. Since the 1948 declaration, that the question of the Race has arousing a lot of questions, starting with the concept of racism and race. Since that, biologically we are all the same race, what we have are different phenotypes, so what I think is that the color of the skin plays a high role in the question of nationalism, because it is still connected to ancient conceptual ideas of more and less developed peoples that started in the beginnings of Anthropology. So, when we speak about racism, we start a process of preconception ideas that often leads to discrimination, so nationalism, in some contexts is highly connected to ancient ideas, colonial conceptions of less developed and salvage people, almost neglecting the Boas cultural relativism. So, in my opinion, this colonial vision of the "other" still produces a lot of discrimination towards those who show a different phenotype, and justify or try to justify a lot of political demands in a very old Europe.

Jolanda Lindenberg said:

Hi John & Nikos,
Nice discussion going here. I am currently working in Belgium and dealing with issues of nationalism (or subnationalism). I like your elaboration Nikos. I think it shows several issues
- the contextual nature of nationalism, e.g. which persons are present, which group are you in, where are you etc.
- multiple identities (but I think it is interesting to note the different levels at play as well)
- primordialism and instrumentalism
I do not want to get an old debate starting, but since Nikos raised the issue of racism, I just thought this should be mentioned. Of course the relationship between nationalism and racism is quite strong, in some cases stronger than others but emic primordialism is quite common. In Belgium, like in other countries, many people discussed differences in mentalities and souls, but again one should watch in which situation and with what purpose. I think that as researchers our challenge is to exactly analyze that. Now what I find interesting in this issue, an issue which actually came up in a colloquium after reading work of our colleague Andrea Riester on Burkina Faso, is how do we researchers reify, or reiterate emic conceptualizations of nationalism? how to deal with this without actually contributing to it? Although I might have some suggestions I'd like to hear your responses!

[André Manuel Clareza Correia]

Nationalism and racism are quite distinct terms as well as forms of diferentiation using valorative and devalorative investment. Both are basic forms of discrimination within the human species. If we agree that we - portuguese, english, angolan, senegalese, sambians, papuas - are all humans, anything that is used as differentiation - e.g. colour, nationality, religion, ethnicity . tems from the mental clivage that starts with the self, the body, in the relations with the baby and mother/then father. What comes next are strategies of survival of the human being to the world.
For example: why do people, generally, do a clivage between gypsy and non-gypsy in every country in europe? It is a phenomenon that goes far beyond - and deeper - than nationality.

[Michael Vicente Perez]

Anthony Marx explores this question in his book Making Race and Nation. I haven't read the full text in quite a while but I do recall that he argues that racism can play a critical role in nationalist projects. Following the Civil War in the U.S., for example, nationalists attempted to reconcile "white" tensions through the legal exclusion of "blacks." Racist state policies, in this case, promoted white nationalist unity. The idea of the "nation" was thus racialized and the state facilitated the institutionalization of that nation through racist policies of exclusion. What I think Marx's book shows very clearly is that the "state" can play a pivotal role in nationalist projects through the creation of inclusionary and exclusionary policies.