Nationalism

Abstract

Nationalism is the belief that the interests and values of a particular nation are prior to, and often superior to, those of others. Etymologically, the origins of the term can be traced back to the Latin word natio, or “something born,” which was used by Romans to refer to a community of foreigners. It is commonly believed that in its modern sense of “love for a particular nation,” the term was first used in 1798. Nationalism refers to both an ideology and a political movement. In the context of the French Revolution, nationalism has come to be associated with the more inclusive idea of popular sovereignty based on shared and equal citizenship. Later, under the impact of German Romantic thought, it has also been connected to exclusivist notions of ethnic and cultural distinctiveness. As a political movement, nationalism has often entailed the fusion of these two ideals, presupposing a world composed of “nation-states” in which, at least in theory, each nation has a right to a state of its own, later called the principle of national self-determination. Nationalism has outlived the expectations of a great many thinkers, both on the right and the left, who predicted its imminent demise, and reasserted itself as a powerful tool for mobilization in the wake of the end of the Cold War, inspiring or energizing a vast array of political projects, from independentism and isolationism to authoritarianism and populism. Despite attempts to pool sovereignty in supranational or transnational bodies, mostly to counter the corrosive and uneven impact of globalization, nationalism remains the fundamental organizing principle of interstate order and the ultimate source of political legitimacy. For many, it is also the taken-for-granted context of everyday life and a readily available cognitive and discursive frame to make sense of the world that surrounds them.