Nationalism and Ethnicity: Europe

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Nationalism and Ethnicity: Europe

Although Europe was the cradle of modern nationalism, many believed that nationalism was on the wane on the continent in the aftermath of World War II (1939–1945). The horrors of the war strongly indicated the need for supranationality and ideologies of community that were not based on ethnic allegiances and images of foreigners as enemies. The spread of Communist rule in Eastern and Central Europe after 1945 was seen by many as proof that nationalism could be superseded by more “advanced” ideologies. In Western Europe, the establishment in 1957 of the European Economic Community (later the European Union) was similarly seen as a clear sign that emergent supranationality would gradually replace older, often ethnically based, national identities.

A series of events and political developments toward the end of the twentieth century would disprove these assumptions, at least temporarily. A new academic literature on nationalism flourished from the 1980s (Gellner 1983; Anderson 1983; Hobsbawm 1990; and many others), and courses on nationalism were introduced at universities all over the continent.

NEW NATIONALISM OR OLD?

The resurgence of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe cannot be considered in isolation from the collapse of Communism (1989–1991), whereby the constituent states of the Soviet Union gained or regained full independence, and liberal democracy was (re-)introduced in satellite states, such as Poland and Hungary. Nationalism, often of a romantic form emphasizing language and cultural traditions as constitutive of the nation, was set in opposition to the dehumanizing and soulless character of Communism. Political nationalism had been banned under Communist rule, although aesthetic and politically harmless expressions of national or ethnic culture were often encouraged, from traditional music in Romania to open-air folk museums in Poland and shamanistic rituals in Siberia. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, nationalist parties such as Sajudis in Lithuania and the Slovak Nationalist Party emerged, and nationalism replaced Communism as the dominant ideology of cohesion. Political tensions in the European post-Communist states tended to follow a nationalist-liberal divide from the very beginning.

Yugoslavia was a special case. Not only was the country nonaligned and free from direct Soviet influence, but it was also the only European country to be dismantled through a succession of civil wars throughout the 1990s (see Ignatieff 1994). Wars were fought between Serbia and Slovenia (very briefly), between Serbia and Croatia, between the three constituent groups of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Bosnian Muslims, Serbian Orthodox, and Croatian Catholics), and finally between Serb forces and secessionists in largely Albanian-speaking Kosovo. Although the ultimate causes of the collapse of Yugoslavia may have been economic, the discourse surrounding the drama was entirely ethno-national in character.

Paradoxically, the three groups making up the Bosnian population spoke the same language (with minor dialect variations) and often lived in mixed areas. The cultural differences were minimal, yet it could be argued that social integration followed ethnic lines, so that resources (economic, social, political) were distributed according to an ethnic logic. The war was not, in other words, over identity, but rather group-based competition for scarce resources. However, the collectivities that came into existence as effective groups were ethno-national in nature. This fact reminded many Europeans of the continued importance of national identity on the continent.

Contemporary Central and Eastern European nationalisms tend to have a strong ethnic element, witnessed perhaps most clearly in practices toward ethnic minorities. For example, exclusionist practices toward Roma (gypsy) minorities in Slovakia, Hungary, and elsewhere have repeatedly been criticized by international human rights organizations, and the Russian-speaking minorities of the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia have lacked the cultural recognition often accorded to similar minorities in Western Europe.

Whether the sentiments exploited during the civil wars of Yugoslavia and in post-Communist politics elsewhere could draw on old nationalist ideologies, or whether they were, on the contrary, the expression of a modern ideology pretending to have ancient roots, cannot be answered decisively. Contemporary national identities are fundamentally modern and connected to the modern state, but they draw on a collective sense of belonging and shared identity that in many cases is very old (Smith 1991). It is an empirical question when these identities become urgently relevant at the expense of other identities (such as those associated with class, gender, place, and so on).

NATIONALISM AND GLOBALIZATION

Like the eastern part of the continent, Western Europe saw a resurgence of nationalist sentiment, politics, and movements toward the end of the twentieth century, and the trend continues in the twenty-first century. Three factors can be invoked to explain this.

First, globalization—the growth of transnational connections due to technological and economic changes—has created a widespread sense of vulnerability with respect to old, rooted cultural traditions and national sovereignty. Some aspects of national cultures have changed very fast, while other aspects have come to be seen as obsolete, and

as a result of increased global connectedness, the boundaries of national identity have in many cases become negotiable (Eriksen 2007).

Second, the influx of non-European immigrants into Western Europe, has increased markedly in the last few decades, stimulating a range of debates about national identities, values, the possibilities of integration, the social role of religion, and so on. In the process, it often became clear that there rarely existed unequivocal, widely shared notions of the nature of nationhood.

Third, increased European integration via the European Union has led to a new awareness of national identity as people face standardization and higher-level integration into an ever-stronger European identity formation.

This heightened national awareness may take several forms. One form is the symbolic, whereby, for example, national foods, folk dress, or popular culture are invested with importance as a way of counteracting the presumably homogenizing forces of globalization. Heightened national awareness may also take commercial form, whereby tourist boards, local administrations, and other groups take pains to present the nation as a unique and exotic place, different from anywhere else and therefore worth visiting. The third, and most consequential, form of contemporary European nationalism is political, which is, in a strict sense, the only expression of national sentiment that is properly nationalist, nationalism being primarily a political ideology.

Political nationalism in Western Europe tends to be associated with the “New Right,” that is, the parties that openly defend an ethno-cultural model of the nation and therefore wish to reduce immigration substantially and force immigrants to adapt their customs to those of the majority. In Denmark, Austria, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands, in particular, New Right parties have been successful at elections, but such parties are present and sometimes influential in other countries as well, as in France with its Front National.

However, contemporary political nationalism can also be seen as a wider phenomenon, namely, as the project of securing national autonomy and self-determination in a situation of intensified globalization and transnationaliza-tion. Seen in this way, most, if not all, contemporary Western European political parties are forced to relate to nationalist projects, since they have to specify the relationship between national sovereignty and supranational forces and organizations.

THE MUSLIM AS “THE OTHER”

Since the closing years of the twentieth century, public debates about national identity in European countries have increasingly centered on the relationship of European identities to Islam. This development has several causes. First, the growing number of Muslim immigrants (and their descendants) in Western European countries implies closer relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims. Second, a series of confrontations between self-professed representatives of Islam and the West has heightened the sense of tension among both Muslims and non-Muslims. Terrorist attacks on Western targets have played an important part here, the most dramatic event being al-Qaeda's attacks on targets in the United States on September 11, 2001, but the significance of Israeli attacks on Palestinian settlements should not be underestimated as a source of resentment among Muslims worldwide. Third, identity politics has increased in importance globally, and for many Muslims, the typical form of identity politics has been neither nationalist nor ethnic, but religious.

An influential theory seeking to explain conflicts in the contemporary world was set forth by Samuel Hun-tington in his 1996 analysis of “the clash of civilizations.” According to Huntington, future geopolitical conflicts will not be fought along ideological lines, but rather along cultural lines, the main conflict areas being near or at the “fault lines” between the world's civilizations. One of the main fault lines in Huntington's model is the line assumed to exist between Western Christianity and Islam.

Although Huntington's theory has been criticized both on conceptual and empirical grounds, it is by and large credible in pointing out the significance of collective identity, or culture, in contemporary politics. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in debates over national and European identity in European countries. Turkey, a largely Muslim country with a secular constitution, has made efforts to become a member of the European Union since 1987, and it is widely believed that its lack of success is partly to be explained by religion. Although many Europeans today do not practice Christianity—many are atheists or hold heterodox religious beliefs—the symbolic link between Europeanness and Christianity remains strong, and Europe continues, by and large, to identify itself as a Christian continent.

In arguing that Islam is inimical to European national identities, writers and politicians in several countries have maintained that the Islamic societal model is incompatible with democracy, various civil rights, and the freedom of women. The problems of integration associated with some (but not all) Muslims in Europe can be traced to the fact that sharia (Islamic law) is both a legal system and an integral part of the religion, and that Islam is thus an antinationalist religion, placing religious identity before national identity. As a response to these and other accusations, Muslim intellectuals such as Tariq Ramadan (2005) have proposed reforms within Islam, aiming to make it compatible with European societal

models and especially the liberal values that are founda-tional to European democracies. It nevertheless remains to be seen whether, in the future, Muslims will be considered full members of European nations (with the exceptions, of course, of largely Muslim countries like Bosnia and Albania).

NATIONALIST OPTIONS

The centripetal forces of nationalist, regionalist, and ethnic consolidation continuously counteract the centrifugal forces of the European Union. Since the European Union constitutes an ambiguous political entity—it is neither state, nor federation, nor confederation, but has clear elements of all three—its member countries, as well as regions within (or crossing boundaries between) countries, have chosen different approaches in relating their collective identities to that of the European Union. Because the European Union is the continent's main gravitational force, it influences political processes in nonmember states as well.

One alternative is that chosen in Spanish Catalonia, which has a distinctive linguistic and ethnic identity that stands in contrast to the majority Castilian identity in Spain. Rather than opting for full national independence, Catalonian politicians have reconciled themselves with the Spanish federation, but have worked to safeguard the Catalonian language, the relative autonomy of the region, and the possibility of combining collective identities in a nested manner. Thus, in Barcelona one may sometimes see four flags side by side: that of the city of Barcelona, the Catalonian flag, the Spanish flag, and the European Union flag.

The Scottish model is similar, but may ultimately have a different outcome. Since the formation of a separate Scottish parliament following a referendum in 1997, questions regarding the role of Scotland within the United Kingdom have regularly been raised. The Scottish Nationalist Party, which favors full independence on nationalist grounds, received about a third of the votes in the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2007. Other Scottish parties argue that Scottish nationhood is possible within the United Kingdom, and beyond that the European Union, thus arguing along lines similar to the Catalonians.

Significantly, no member state in the European Union has so far split apart. The new nation-states of Europe all came into being after the collapse of the Soviet empire and its satellite states. Czechoslovakia was peacefully divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 for nationalist reasons (Slovaks being a distinct ethnic group, or nation, although closely related to the Czechs), and the breakup of Yugoslavia cannot be understood independently of the reemergence of politicized nationalism in the region. Following the secession of Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia in 1991, multiethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina opted out and was plunged into a civil war (1993–1995). In Kosovo, a region largely inhabited by ethnic Albanians but symbolically important in Serbian ethnic identity, civil war raged from 1996 to 1999, eventually leading to a fragile independence presided over by the United Nations, interspersed with violent incidents, before full independence from Serbia was achieved in 2008. Finally, the tiny republic of Montenegro, whose inhabitants are culturally and linguistically close to the Serbians (unlike the Kosovars) declared its independence in 2006.

The breakup of Yugoslavia was violent and painful, with foreign countries often supporting different parties during the armed conflicts. The complexities of the Yugoslav situation highlight the difficulties of nationalism in general. Ethnic nationalism is rarely an easy option, since most ethnic groups share their territory with others. Thus, the concept of “ethnic cleansing” (a mixture of extermination and expulsion) became a common term for describing nationalist activities during Yugoslavia's bloody breakup period. Moreover, many Yugoslavs lived with mixed identities because they were of mixed (e.g., Macedonian-Serbian) origin, which suddenly became illegitimate and “impure.” The ethno-nationalist map did not fit the territory, which was far less clear-cut than one might have expected.

Scottish nationalists opting for full independence would come up against similar problems if they were to base Scottishness on an ethnic identity. First, it would be difficult to determine who was a “real” Scot, because many, if not most, Scots (like other Europeans) have mixed origins. Second, Scotland is not inhabited by Scots alone, but also by English, Irish, and substantial numbers of more recent immigrants. Thus, a successful Scottish nationalism would have to be based on criteria other than origins.

EUROPEAN MODELS OF THE NATION, PLUS ALTERNATIVES

In theories of nationalism, it is customary to distinguish between two main forms (although many typologies include five or six): ethnic nationalism based on kinship, origin, and jus sanguinis (the law of the blood); and civic nationalism based on shared territory and jus solis (the law of the soil). Current controversies over the nature of European nations expose the tension between these two principles, which are nevertheless often mixed in practice. An intermediate form of nationalism could be a linguistic nationalism that emphasizes shared culture (through language) but allows foreigners to enter the nation, provided they learn the local language.

There are alternatives to the classic forms of nationalism. As mentioned above, some nations thrive without a state (but with regional autonomy), while others negotiate their future amidst transnational turmoil, migration, and a range of foreign cultural influences. A pan-European identity has been posited as an alternative to the parochial and potentially divisive national identities, an approach most poignantly articulated in the Treaty of Maastricht (signed in 1992), but this alternative has failed to gain the tangible support of most Europeans. Europeans today relate emotionally to their national football teams, contemporary places, and historical sites in their countries, their language and arts, their myths, and their flags. No supranational identity, European or otherwise, has so far proved capable of trumping these identities for the majority of Europeans. The relevant challenge in the near future consists not, therefore, in dismantling national identities, but rather in balancing national cohesion with an openness to the world, both in the sense of international cooperation and interaction, and in the sense of allowing newcomers into the nation as full members.