I’m reading The Psychology of Nationalism, by Joshua Searle-White, 2001.
There are two academic reviews that I know of:
Some of my notes:
The answer is that no social identity is inherently any more important than any other, but the social circumstances in which we live serve to reinforce certain identities—and especially national identity—as being most salient.
To make that point, however, we first need to understand the nature and qualities of national identity in some depth.
(p. 52)
It seems to me that definitions of nation that exclude peoples that aspire to nationhood fall short, given that those peoples are very likely going to make the news.
Benedict Anderson, another well-known theorist of nationalism, provides a very different definition, suggesting that the nation is “an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.”5 By “imagined,” Anderson does not mean “unreal”; he simply means that nations are communities in which people believe there is a connection between them and the other members of that nation, even if they have never actually [p. 53] come into contact with those others (as, indeed, most people in a nation never will). This definition allows for linguistic or ethnic groups that do not actually control their own territory and economic life, but that perhaps have aspirations to do so, to consider themselves “nations,” as indeed do many of the Sri Lankan Tamils.More importantly, Anderson’s definition highlights that national identity is not simply racial or territorial or economic or political; it is also psychological. People identify themselves with national groups, and that is part of what makes those national groups real. We envision connections between ourselves and the rest of that national group. These connections do not have to be historically “true”; they simply need to be psychologically real. National Narratives One primary way in which we envision this connection between us and the other members of our nation is through shared stories of the origin and experiences of our people, or what might be termed “national narratives.”6
Competing national narratives.
But whether or not historical narratives are literally true is not the central point; moreover, in many (or even most) cases, that is impossible to determine. The importance is that such stories are one of the central defining features of national identity, and they can play heavily into nationalist conflict.17
The reference does not give examples of national narratives, but examples of using past events to explain current events (and mostly about economy). A mistake? I really was hoping for a “wide range of examples”.
However, the author himself does give some examples of competing narratives, changes in national identity, narratives that turn out to be the result of recent events or the work or revisionist historians, etc. (pp. 57-58)
on the face of it, national identity, as a variety of social identity, is not different from any other variety. And yet national identity does play a special role, at least in the world as it now is. Political leaders who speak of nations as if they are the most important form of social organization, to be protected and fought for, do not even feel the need to justify this assertion.29
Wikipedia has an helpful article on Billig: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banal_nationalism (also helpful a few reviews on Amazon
I skimmed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_identity_theory
Then I asked chatGPT
Social Identity Theory is a psychological concept developed by British social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s. It explores how individuals develop a sense of identity and self-concept based on their membership in various social groups. This theory helps explain how people define themselves and their self-esteem in relation to the groups they belong to, such as their nationality, religion, ethnicity, gender, or even their sports team affiliation.
Here are some key points about Social Identity Theory:
Social Categorization: According to the theory, people naturally categorize themselves and others into social groups based on common characteristics, such as age, gender, race, or interests. This categorization is a fundamental part of how humans make sense of their social world.
Social Identity: People not only identify themselves as individuals but also as members of particular social groups. These group memberships contribute to their social identity, which is the part of their self-concept associated with their group affiliations.
Ingroup and Outgroup: Social Identity Theory introduces the concepts of "ingroup" and "outgroup." An ingroup is the group to which an individual belongs, while an outgroup is any group to which they do not belong. People tend to favor their ingroup over outgroups, often leading to in-group bias or favoritism.
Social Comparison: To enhance their self-esteem and self-worth, individuals often engage in social comparison, comparing their ingroup positively to outgroups. This process can lead to the reinforcement of stereotypes and prejudice against outgroups.
Self-Esteem and Social Identity: Social Identity Theory proposes that self-esteem is closely tied to one's social identity. When people feel positively about their ingroup and identify strongly with it, it can boost their self-esteem. Conversely, threats to their ingroup can lead to lowered self-esteem.
Tajfel's Minimal Group Paradigm: Henri Tajfel conducted a famous experiment known as the "Minimal Group Paradigm" to demonstrate how even minimal group distinctions, such as arbitrary group assignments, can lead to ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination. This research highlighted the power of social categorization in shaping behavior.
Applications: Social Identity Theory has been widely applied in various fields, including social psychology, sociology, and organizational psychology. It helps explain phenomena like intergroup conflict, discrimination, and the formation of group norms and identities.
Overall, Social Identity Theory provides valuable insights into how group membership shapes our perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors, and it remains a fundamental concept in the study of social psychology and human behavior.
Social Identity Theory assumes that we are all constantly striving to improve our self-concept—our sense of how valuable we are. (I will examine that assumption in the next chapter.) Our evaluation of ourselves is inherently comparative, in that when we want to assess how good we are, the primary way to do so is to look at other individuals and social groups and see how we line up. So when faced with an array of social groups with which to identify (a process that does not need to take place consciously), we will tend to identify most with the group that provides the best opportunity to promote a positive sense of social identity.35
See John C. Turner, “Social Comparison and Social Identity: Some Prospects for Intergroup Behaviour,” European Journal of Social Psychology 5 (1975): 5-34, for a clear statement of this position.
Turner, John C. “Social Comparison and Social Identity: Some Prospects for Intergroup Behaviour.” European Journal of Social Psychology 5 (1975), 5-34. Turner, John C., Penelope J. Oakes, S. Alexander Haslam, and Craig McGarty. “Self and Collective: Cognition and Social Context.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20 (1994): 454-463.
... if we are always searching for any way to value ourselves more positively, then we will reach, even unconsciously, for the social identity that will give us the best chance to do so.
Anecdotal: this reminds me of an article (unfortunately a sloppy newspaper article) about a Ukrainian boy who was held by the Russians for about half a year before he was united with his family in Ukraine again. It seems he was susceptible for identifying with Russia as the greater more powerful etc. nation.
If identifying with a national group provides an opportunity for positively valuing ourselves, then we will identify with that national group—in other words, we will experience nationalism. And does national identity provide us with more opportunities for positive social evaluation? The answer is that in our current world context, it does. And it does so for several reasons. (p . 62)
This seems to be part of the explanation (according the author) of why nationalism is more compelling to adopt or front as a social identity than other social identities.
This reminds me of Turkish people in the Netherlands, who often self-identify as Turkish instead of Dutch. (Maybe is does not fit exactly here, perhaps it does in the sense of preferring the high status of being a Turkish citizen versus the low status of a minority ethnic or cultural group in the Netherlands.)
Overall, we affiliate with national identities because they provide us with a way of improving our self-concept, and others target our national identities for threat because they, in turn, are trying to improve their own self-concept. Changes in the social-political context, such as a potential bid for independence or a threat to some aspect of our integrity as a people, intensify that identification. With this idea we can begin to see why the nation inspires such devotion in the current world context. Nationhood is in many ways the currency of self-worth, and the more it is trumpeted as the natural, most important, and most respected form of social identity, the more we will cling to that identity in our daily sense of ourselves. (p. 64)
This way of thinking about national identity fits the facts of nationalism better than does positing the awakening of some long-dormant but static national antagonisms. It also suggests that in another context, other kinds of identity (religious or ethnic identity, for example) could serve the same function. For example, in a time when it was believed that salvation was the most important goal of life, rather than self-determination, we would expect religious identity to have been more important than national identity—as indeed it was in Europe during much of the Middle Ages. At other times, class identity has been seen as the most important way of gaining a sense of self-respect and self-worth, and then we would expect class identity to be people’s most salient social identity, as indeed it has been during class revolutions around the world. (p. 65)
I remember from history texts about WW1 that it was remarkable that the class struggle was quickly abandoned for defending the nation.
Similarly, people sometimes shift from valuing a citizenship-based sense of nationhood to an ethnic one, as has happened in Bosnia and Rwanda. This approach takes into account the shifting nature of identity that is so evident in our daily lives. And given the international system as it now stands, this approach helps us understand why national identity, at this time, would seem to be so popular a way to identify ourselves, even in those areas of the world that do not have the Western European history of building nation-states. [ here perhaps also referring back to benefits that I didn’t write down ]
What is it about the nature of identity that leads us to be striving constantly to improve it? And even if devaluing others plays a role for us, why do people so often do it with such brutality and vehemence? After all, to devalue another group, all we have to do is to say that they are bad or worthless; we do not need to rape or kill them, or to mutilate their bodies after they are dead. By focusing on identity we have found a unit of analysis that will help us understand the intertwining personal, cultural, and historical aspects of nationalism. But for that unit of analysis to be adequate, we have to understand the more emotional issues, too. And in order to do so, we will have to take a deeper look at the nature of identity.
Here in the West we tend to take “identity” as a given, believing that we have a coherent and bounded identity that is consistent from moment to moment and situation to situation.1 And yet it seems clear, as I argued in the previous chapter, that the reality of identity is more complex than that. The “self” is partially defined by our relationships with others, and our conception of ourselves shifts and changes depending on the social context—what is happening around us, both in our immediate situation and even, potentially, far away. The self is neither coherent nor consistent.
The ideal against which we compare ourselves typically comes from popular culture. Society (embodied in religious institutions, schools, and parents) embraces a set of values to which its members are expected to subscribe. In Western society these values might include developing a clearly defined individual identity, a social conscience, confidence, and the desire to do good work. In an Asian society the values might include showing proper respect for ancestors and devoting oneself to the welfare of one’s family. In an Islamic society it be might submitting oneself to the will of God and following the commandments of the Koran. All of these social traditions have ways of saying what it means to be a “good” member of society.
Ernest Becker describes the connection between conflict and a feeling of pollution this way:
The irony is that men are always dissatisfied and guilty in small and large ways, and this is what drives them to a search for purity where all dissatisfaction can come to a head and be wiped away. Men try to qualify for eternalization by being clean and by cleansing the world around them of the evil, the dirty. . . . The highest heroism is the stamping out of those who are tainted.51
Becker’s point is that we escape our fear of death by trying to become perfect and getting rid of those people who remind us of our inherent imperfection. Rhetoric about ridding society of those who are evil or bad, is of course, a persistent feature of religious and secular conflict. In Pakistan, for example, the leader of a guerrilla group called “The Army of the Pure” says that his group is obligated to “destroy the forces of evil and disbelief,” and trains young men to fight against India in Kashmir.52
The concept of pollution is another way of expressing the inherent unease we have with our own sense of identity.
Conclusions
In essence, we as humans easily feel threatened. We want to believe that our identity is solid, and yet we suspect that it is fragile.
We want to believe that we are good and moral, but we suspect that we are not. We are afraid of various aspects of ourselves, and so we reject them and see them as alien, as sin or pollution. We are not who we want to be. The result of all this is that we feel flawed, inadequate, or unfulfilled, and we do not want to feel that way. We crave a sense of being good, being just, [p. 85] and being right, but we do not know how to get it. However, nationalism provides us with a way out of this situation. Nationalism provides a way for us to join together with others, to be convinced that we are good, and to live in the service of a just cause. How nationalism meets our need to feel justified is the subject of the next chapter.
(my emphasis)
The part I emphasized seems intuitively true. It is however, not unique to nationalism.
Feeling right is a very powerful motivator. (p. 88)
If you have ever been in a serious conflict with someone, then you may have a sense of what truly righteous anger is like. It is a stomach-churning experience. On the one hand, there is often great frustration at feeling victimized, betrayed, hurt, or ignored, depending on what the situation is. And yet, there is also a satisfying aspect to righteous anger. It helps us to obtain clarity from the complicated tangle of our feelings. When someone has clearly done us wrong, we do not have to apologize or feel guilty about the rage and bitterness that we feel. It is our right, as the aggrieved party, to feel those feelings and express them, and no one can fault us for it. We get sympathy from others. And we feel fully justified, in a way that few other life situations allow us to feel.
... “Black January” is a national tragedy for the Azerbaijani people. On January 20, 1990, Soviet troops entered Baku, ostensibly to protect the Armenian population there. (Most of Baku’s substantial Armenian population had fled or been evacuated from Baku several days earlier after anti-Armenian rioting.) Instead of protecting anyone, the Soviet troops killed at least 130 Azerbaijanis and wounded many more.20 This event is now memorialized in “Martyr’s Lane,” an area on a hill on the south side of Baku. A long lane is flanked on each side by gravestones bearing the names, birthdates, and pictures of each of the Azerbaijanis killed on that day. The Azerbaijan government has subsequently added graves on each side of the lane for those who were killed in the war over Nagorno-Karabakh. At the end of the lane, on the site of a former Soviet monument, an eternal flame burns. Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, features a similar monument. It stands atop a hill with a commanding view of the city and is accompanied by a museum honoring the genocide of 1915. It too features an eternal flame, surrounded by obelisks that represent the various regions in which Armenians have traditionally lived. It is accompanied by a museum dedicated to honoring the victims of the massacres.
These events have become part of these people’s collective memories; they were mentioned in nearly all of the interviews I conducted with people in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and they help set the context for their understanding of the current conflict.21 Most national groups have similar historical traumas, such as the Holocaust for the Jews, Pearl Harbor for the Americans, and the defeat at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 for the Serbs.
The memory of such events is kept alive because it also confers upon the aggrieved people the status of victimhood. After all, being a victim brings with it a number of benefits. Being a victim of another’s aggression means that we have suffered unjustly. Being a victim confers upon us a kind of moral authority—a sense that we deserve to be treated specially. In fact, being a victim is so powerful that we would expect people to assume victim status if they can. And indeed, we can find many national groups invoking victim status,23 including such unlikely candidates as present-day China.24 Being a victim gives us the right to take action against our enemies while blaming them for the violence at the same time.
(My emphasis.)
Thus we are reluctant to acknowledge the victimhood of our opponents during a nationalist conflict, while we will insist that they recognize ours. We want to promote our own victimization and deny that of our opponents because victimhood confers power. For us as individuals, it provides a sense of rightness and moral solidity that can help counteract the natural feelings of being flawed that we carry with us. For us as a nation, victim status helps us to gain sympathy and aid from others while bolstering our public cause for the military or other activities that we are carrying out in service of our movement. It is easy to see why nations would highlight their historical tragedies and traumas. (p. 94)
One of the consequences of emphasizing our victimhood is that it leads us to retribution and revenge. In an abstract sense, retribution is an attempt to set the scales of justice right again. If we have suffered a historical wrong, then it is just to have it righted. If our territory has been taken, we deserve to have it back. But unfortunately, nationalist conflict has more dimensions than that. Injuries that one nation inflicts upon another are not simply questions of resources stolen or territory that can be returned. Historical grievances have a psychological component that makes the desire for revenge very common. (p. 95)
... also retribution/revenge for the psychological damage (status, pride, shame)
... escalation because cyclical and need to outdo the other (send clear message)
... obviously, sense of meaning.... (p. 98)
...engaging in a nationalist conflict may bring meaning not only to life, but also to death.
Long-standing nationalist conflicts have devastating effects on many of the very people who are involved in them. And yet the conflicts continue because conflicts help us bring meaning to our lives, bring certainty to ambiguous situations, stabilize our sense of identity, and provide us with a sense of being just and right.
First, any action that conveys a lack of respect for the other party or threatens their identity will undermine negotiations, and any action that conveys respect for the other party or supports their identity will make negotiations more productive. Second, since all parties in negotiations will want to obtain the just solution they believe they deserve, finding a way to meet the needs for perceived justice may provide an opening to resolving the conflict.
... need for apology...
... acknowledging the legitimacy of the other is often very closely linked, in nationalist conflicts, with the issue of selfdetermination—the right for a group to decide how to govern itself.
Psychological work in conflict resolution has suggested that airing such historical grievances is an important part of bringing warring parties together. One approach to conflict resolution used by psychologists has been “problem-solving workshops.”31
In discussing all of these issues I have argued that identity dimensions are intertwined with the issues to be negotiated. We demand acknowledge- [p. 116:] ments of our historical traumas because without them we feel that we are being disrespected or ignored. We demand territory because possession of territory acknowledges us as a cohesive people. We demand to be treated as equals because such treatment gives us the dignity and respect that any people deserve. But these are very complex issues. (pp. 115-116)
Finding ways to safeguard the security of national minorities without recourse to statehood would provide broader opportunities for aggrieved groups to achieve their goals. (p. 117)
We often do not really want to reduce conflict, because we are getting something out of it, personally, politically, or both. And that is not surprising. I have spent much of this book arguing that conflict plays some significant psychological roles for us. Therefore we would expect that, except in the most difficult situations, conflict would be very hard to give up—unless we found some other way of meeting our need to feel right and justified and to have our identity feel cohesive, or unless we were pressured into a resolution by someone more powerful. At the societal level, there is little that anyone can do to make people give up conflict, aside from using peacekeeping forces or some other kind of coercion to keep them apart. At an individual level, though, there is much that we can do to make ourselves less prone to nationalist conflict. (p. 118)
The theoretical argument of this book is that nationalism is one way we fulfill our need to be good, right, just, and a part of something bigger than ourselves.
What other ways are there to meet those needs, aside from finding enemies and rallying members of our group to fight them?
In chapter 4, I described how the major sources of human insecurity are the aspects of ourselves that we find unacceptable. If that is the case, then the first way to take the power out of nationalism is to accept ourselves as we are.
While I am sympathetic towards SW's thesis that our individual psychological shortcomings lay at the basis of our alienation from the other and even our commitment to nationalism as a means to access self-worth and meaning, I don't feel he has proven his thesis sufficiently. Both the psycho-dynamic approaches and the extrapolation from laboratory research fall short of scientific proof. In a way, seeing how people behave, to me is a stronger indication of the underlying psychological mechanisms than either of those two. However, this book is more than twenty years old. It may very well be that in the mean time more empirically based research has been done that establishes this thesis, that on itself already looks like a powerful explanation for the things that people say and do in this context.
We find it much easier to focus on the evils in others than to accept the evils in ourselves.
Correspondingly, our only chance to get out of the cycle of conflict is to accept the reality of who we are, without denying or projecting the parts we do not like.
The central theme of Tillich’s statement is compassion—compassion for ourselves as well as for others.
In order to be free from the difficult aspects of being human, we need, paradoxically, to accept those aspects with compassion. Doing so can free us from the power that our flaws have had over us. If we are not so driven to prove how good we are, or to demonstrate that we are right and just, or to cleanse ourselves, perhaps some of the psychological power of nationalism will be lessened. This kind of compassion does not mean that we would accept all of our evils and simply perpetuate them on others. On the contrary, just as hatred towards one’s self breeds hatred towards others, compassion towards one’s self breeds compassion towards others. When our sense of self-worth does not depend on the devaluation and subjugation of others, we are more able to extricate ourselves from the traps of ingroup-outgroup dynamics. (p. 122)
As a believer, SW can't help suggest that religion might be an alternative to nationalism, but he himself has to admit that history has proven beyond any doubt that religion divides as just as much as nationalism does, on occasion even more, also both might conspire and make the problem even worse. His subsequent appeal to our common humanity is much more sensible.
No doubt methods of reconciliation are crucial to move beyond conflicts. (Earlier in the book SW described a few ways this has been put into practice.)
End of the book already! (Ignoring an appendix with a class session.)
Given how much work SW put into it, traveled all over the world, studied the topic for years, there seems to be very little substance. Most of it feels like guesswork. While the thesis seems credible there is no real scientific basis... but perhaps that is not the route to go. If the thesis has great explanatory power, that might be good enough on its own... unless we need specifics of the psychological mechanics to tackle certain problems...
A low point in the book was SW's attempt to "explain" certain postulated psychological mechanics with reference to christian theology about original sin. That really does not belong in a book with any academic pretense.
Not mentioned in the book as such, but it seems that psychologically healthy people would naturally abstain from many of the evils that nationalism brings about. Why wage war if you are already content?