Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism - Brossura

Marx, Anthony W.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0195182596 ISBN 13: 9780195182590

Casa editrice: Oxford University Press, USA, 2005

Riassunto

Common wisdom has long held that the ascent of the modern nation coincided with the flowering of Enlightenment democracy and the decline of religion, ringing in an age of tolerant, inclusive, liberal states.
Not so, demonstrates Anthony W. Marx in this landmark work of revisionist political history and analysis. In a startling departure from a historical consensus that has dominated views of nationalism for the past quarter century, Marx argues that European nationalism emerged two centuries earlier, in the early modern era, as a form of mass political engagement based on religious conflict, intolerance, and exclusion. Challenging the self-congratulatory geneaology of civic Western nationalism, Marx shows how state-builders attempted to create a sense of national solidarity to support their burgeoning authority. Key to this process was the transfer of power from local to central rulers; the most suitable vehicle for effecting this transfer was religion and fanatical passions.
Religious intolerance―specifically the exclusion of religious minorities from the nascent state―provided the glue that bonded the remaining populations together. Out of this often violent religious intolerance grew popular nationalist sentiment. Only after a core and exclusive nationality was formed in England and France, and less successfully in Spain, did these countries move into the "enlightened" 19th century, all the while continuing to export intolerance and exclusion to overseas colonies.
Providing an explicitly political theory of early nation-building, rather than an account emphasizing economic imperatives or literary imaginings, Marx reveals that liberal, secular Western political traditions were founded on the basis of illiberal, intolerant origins. His provocative account also suggests that present-day exclusive and violent nation-building, or efforts to form solidarity through cultural or religious antagonisms, are not fundamentally different from the West's own earlier experiences.

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Recensione:

"Marx has a case to argue and he argues it forcefully, thereby significantly advancing a debate that has tended, in recent years, to languish in a smug and unquestioning liberal consensus. A major contribution to the interdisciplinary literature on nationalism." ―Partha Chatterjee, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta

"Rejecting almost every previous account of nationalism - including mine! ― Anthony Marx provocatively locates its European origins in rulers' strategies of building support for their regimes by ruthless labeling and exclusion of those regimes' enemies. Marx's work will make students of contemporary nationalism rethink their subject." Charles Tilly, author of From Mobilization to Revolution and Durable Inequality

"This book is a major addition to the social science literature on nationalism; it is also a powerful argument against many of the most celebrated contemporary writers on the subject . . . The central point of the book is that nationalism results from a process of exclusion (most other writers have stressed inclusion), and particularly from internal discord over religion. As both a political scientist and a scrupulous historian, Marx uses this powerful scheme to explain and differentiate events that occurred in Spain, France, and England in the age of domestic religious conflicts. In this remarkable book, it is Sant Bartholomew whom the author proposes as the patron of nationalism. A grim view, but a rich and persuasive argument." ―Foreign Affairs

L'autore:

Anthony Marx is the 18th President of Amherst College. Previously, he was Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center for Historical Social Science at Columbia University. He is the author of Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa, and Brazil, winner of the Barrington Moore Prize, and co-winner of the Ralph Bunche Award.

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• Editore: Oxford University Press, USA
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0195182596
• ISBN 13: 9780195182590
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 276