Emely Medina-Rodríguez

Political Science 643

Zvi Gintelmen

The roles of ethnicity, religion and institutions in the formation of nations

The literature for our class has identifies different many factors that

contributed to the formation of nations. In this paper I will explore these factors

separately and how they interact with each other in the process of forming nations.

The main topics I identify in the literature are: the ethnic composition and heritage

of a national community, the religious components of a nation and the institutions

that compose the state. My intention in this essay is to construct a better

understanding of how institutions interplay with ethnicity and religion, as well as

how ethnics and religion interact with each other in the formation of national

identity and the process of creating a nation.

Ethnic community is identify by Smith (1991) as a community

distinguishable by very specific aspects, some of them being, “collective name, myth

of common ancestry, share historical memories, elements of common culture,

association with a specific homeland and a sense of solidarity for significant sectors

of the population”. He has also explained that ethnicity can be seen in three different

ways; as a primordial quality, as a situational tool or as instrumentally. As a

primordial, ethnicity is seen as natural, timeless or as an extension of human

biology. In the other hand ethnicity can be seen as situational, where being part of a

group is a matter of choice, perceptions, attitudes and sentiments. Looking at

ethnicity as situational also suggest it is mutable, individual and contextual. But

Smith also explains ethnicity can be use instrumentally, meaning that it can be used

for ulterior motives. Ethnicity is not seen as an essential good in its self, but as a

means to an end.

By this third definition of ethnicity we can start making connections with

parts of the literature on ethnicity and the formation of national identity. Ernest

Gellner argues that culture, national myths and the overall sense of nationalism is

essentially the general imposition of high culture on society. Thus using culture,

myths and symbols instrumentally for the retention or gaining of power in society.

Even thought Smith explains ethnicity is derivate from common culture Gellner

understands common culture to be an invention put together instrumentally for the

benefit of the dominant classes seeking to legitimized their power in society. The

literature identified how the dominant group used institutions for the creation and

legitimization of national identities.

Both Anderson and Smith identified particular ways ethnic identity is

reproduced among the national society. Anderson explains in more detail how

dominant classes and the bourgeoisie have used capitalist economy for the

maintenance of an ethnic identity. He argues that print-capitalism and the used of

vernacular language in printed materials helped evening the local customs creating

thus an mew imagined community. He further explicates the interactions between

“system of production and the productive relations (capitalism) and technology of

communications (print)” gave birth to “the bases for national consciousness” and

“helped to build the image of antiquity” ethnics and national identity are based.

In the other hand Smith explains the state apparatus helped the dominant

class create a “new and broader cultural identity for the population” (55). State

institutions such as the legal system, economic system, the educational system and

the militia helped in the formation of an ethnic community. This institutions

maintained the symbols, myths, values, traditions and memories which ethnic and

nationality is embedded. He explains this institutions are not the creators of an

ethnic identity but it does maintains the culture and helps maintain a unify polity. A

good example of how this institutions have done this can be seen in Andersons

discussion of print-capitalism. Education is another institution helping “to socialize

future generations to be citizens” of the new nation (Smith 1991). These institutions

provide uniformity between members of an ethnic or national community, thus

helping in the formation of nations.

But this discussion cannot be treated as including the total complexity of the

interplay between state institutions with ethnicity. Verdery gives us excellent

examples of the power the state has to determining who is included as part of the

nation and who is excluded. He explains how the state treats the multi-ethnical

problem is his exploration of the USSR. In his exploration of German minorities in

Rumania we can see how socialist policies undertone the ethnic identification of

German minorities. Institutional policies working in excluding and undermining the

German minorities made changes within the group, how they identify and their

solidarity to the German communities in Rumania.

Brubaker explains a different role on institutions in the formation of nations.

Here the institutions use ethnicity in a more practical manner, and not in its more

“spiritual” manner. He explicates that “the soviet institutions of territorial

nationhood and personal nationality constituted a pervasive system of social

classification, principle of vision and division of the social world, a standardized

scheme of social accounting, a interpretative grid for public discussion, a set of

boundary- markers, a legitimate form for public and private identities” (48). With

these examples we can see how permissive or restrictive state institutions can be in

the topic of ethnicity. We can see that ethnicity in these cases is contextual and

instrumental.

The literature also identifies religion as another important factor in the

creation of nations. We can see religion intertwined with ethnicity in the creation of

myths, memories and traditions of a nation. Also, we can see tradition being used as

an instrument to unify a polity even in ethnically diverse communities. The state has

also used religion instrumentally by acquiring an official religion or even using

national identity as a worshipable icon in itself. The interplays between religion,

ethnicity and state institutions are diverse and historically contextual, but

nevertheless they are used constantly in the creation and maintenance of a nation.

Religious icons and religious myths have been used by nations to set the

bases of their national and ethnic identity. Religious institutions have function as

keepers of traditions, they “record, preserves and transmit ethnic myths, memories

and symbols” through the cultural communities. This religion’s task intertwines

with ethnicity and national identity in some cases to the extent of near fusion. In

countries like Malaysia there is nearly no distinction between being Malay and being

Islamic (Nagata). But religion can be particular to an ethnic group as in the case of

Jews, or as in the Malay case religion merges with ethnicity as a consequence of

history and migration. In some cases this two factors are hard to separate because

one feeds the other.

The literature identifies two important ways the state has used religion for

the creation and maintenance of nations. First, religion is used by the state when is

included as an organized state religion. Secondly, the state uses of religious sense in

the formation of the national sentiment. Hayes argues that nationalism has been

used in a religious sense in times where popular religiosity has been tone-down by

the state or by the historical context. The socialist regimes in the USSR or the

modern industrial and post-industrial era are good examples. Ethnical and national

identity replaced peoples’ necessity to belief, gave people myths and a destiny or

collective faith in their nations (Hayes 165). In the other hand the state has used

organized religion to help “ensure the survival of certain ethnic communities across

the centuries, despite many changes in their social composition and cultural

content” (Smith 1991). An organized religion holds together the traditions, customs,

symbols and artifacts that can get lost through generations or migratory fluxes.

Together with the judicial and educational institutions, religion helps to give

continuity to nationality and helps maintain communal solidarity in the nation.

Although the literature for our class is a great compilation of examples and

theories about ethnicity, religion and the formation of nations, there is one

particular topic I did not saw being discuss in deep. That is how ethnicity and

religion manifests in cultures that have been colonized. What are the consequences

of the overlapping of indigenous cultures and fully formed nationalities. The

literature focuses mostly in the development of nations in Euro-Asia, even thought

there is discussion about ethnics and religion, I think it will be a good exercise to

also see how pre-Columbian societies in their process of forming a nation.