Is nationalism a social movement?

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To address whether or not nationalism is a social movement requires the examination of both terms’ definition in detail.  In this essay I argue that while nationalism generally meets many of the tenets of a social movement, its categorization as one depends on which theory of the origins of nationalism to which one ascribes.

Connor notes that most scholars define a nation as a group of people that share a common language, geographic territory or religion.  A primordialist would expand upon this definition and assert that nations are defined by groups of people that have the perception (if not the genetic reality) of “shared blood.”  In the majority of cases, these groups of similar people can also be called ethnicities.  When formal boundaries are drawn for a given ethnicity—this is effectively politics—a nation is created.  This process of creating a border and seeking self-determination by a mobilized common group of people is nationalism.  It nearly always involves conflict with another group.  Muller notes that most Americans are far more familiar with civic nationalism (i.e., a common geographic territorial identity as the definition of a nation) despite the fact that ethnic nationalism has been a far more prevalent occurrence globally, as well as throughout most of the United States’ own history.

A social movement is a group of people that band together with a specific goal (e.g., autonomy, equal rights) and a collective identity (e.g., Mormon, Black, Gay).  They occur most often when there is not a political or institutional means by which they can solve their grievances.  A group’s collective identity is important because one of the primary goals of a social movement is to push that identity to the forefront of the political establishment.   In parallel with their efforts for recognition and a public platform, their overall goals emerge as an organic product of their identity.  The process of mobilization itself is paramount as it is typically characterized by initial steps to raise public awareness of the problem (e.g., media, letter-writing campaigns, social media) and then by steps intended to provoke corrective action by a government (e.g., public demonstrations, strikes, marches, boycotts).  Typically successful social movements are nonviolent, especially when they aim to effect regime change.  Efforts to topple a regime qualify as social movements when there are no established mechanisms to change a state’s leadership (i.e., under a dictatorship or authoritarian regime).  Sharp successfully argues for a nonviolent strategy to overthrow a recalcitrant regime in his seminal work From Dictatorship to Democracy, a book that has become a playbook for social movements globally.  By espousing nonviolence, social movements avoid playing to a government’s strength—its monopoly on force.  Through defiance and disobedience—coupled with an overarching grand strategy—movements can provide the necessary pressure to achieve their goals.

The process of an ethnic group mobilizing for the common goal of their own nation certainly meets the cursory definitions of a social movement.  It often stands a separate, however, for several reasons.  Namely, the gap occurs because of the many competing theories for why nationalism occurs.  The primordialist explanation asserts nationalism occurs in an ancient, timeless plane that emerges out of fixed unchanging identities.  This slow and organic process does not match the mobilization elements and speed of a social movement.  The structuralist believes that the state makes the nation and that nationalism emerges as a product of modernity.  This idea of nationalism as a product of an environment ignores the role of people so crucial to a social movement.  Only the instrumentalist explanation matches the categorization of nationalism as a social movement.  Instrumentalists believe that the choices of people matter and that nationalism is a dynamic process that can occur quickly.  Ultimately, all three theories on the origins of nationalism have merit and can be substantiated empirically at various points in history.  The process of identifying the instances when nationalism was a social movement proves useful as it highlights the cases where a group did affect, promote and establish their own identity and nation.