Nations and Nationalism by Ernest Gellner

In practice it serves the purpose of manufacturing for the state the type of human being that fits its needs. This system is a lumbering, unconscionably expensive apparatus that can only be administered by an entity the size of a state. One of the key requirements for creating a nation is control of the education system. Appropriately, this is also the type of person its institutions produce. To put it simply the modern nation is characterized by homogeneity, anonymity and functional literacy. As defined by Gellner, the nation is a unit large enough to reproduce itself through education, ideologically bound to a single literate culture and consisting mostly of deracinated ('gelded'), interchangeable people who can be moved with little retraining between the various occupations demanded by society. Into this breach emerged what we call nationalism, which remains the system that the overwhelming majority of human beings live under today. So is the way to view history according to productive methods (114).Gellner obviously has passionate views on this subject and uses some decently convincing arguments to strengthen his case.The sudden emergence of industrial society required a new type of person as well as a new organizing principle to support itself. But the whole nationalism and industrialization study can be said to prove the super-structure theory.

Gellner breaks world history down to three stages (Hunting-gathering, agrarian, and the industrial. However, sometimes contradicting with himself throughout the book: “admittedly” culture was used to form nation, culture distance was used to counter economic exploitation (55). The latter is what nationalism uses for disguise and legitimacy.Bend on proving culture is not a real foundation of nationalism. The former is what links industrialization and nationalism. Gellner separates culture as high (literary) culture and folk culture. He said that only prior to the rise of industrialization was there any horizontal differentiation within society (12). He believed that the industrial society strengthened the boundaries between nations. However he admits that the resources are not available to fully implement a system to provide full literacy to its citizens (17). He says that in agrarian society, literacy is a necessity to nationalism.

He uses the example of “agrarian society” to describe nationalism. Gellner also described what caused nationalism to emerge the way it did. Gellner was clearly making a connection between the rise of industrialization and the emergence of nationalism. To satisfy the new nationalist imperative which now, for the first time, was making itself felt.

Nations and Nationalism by Ernest Gellner