Peoples and nations: cultural and political collective self-identification

ABSTRACT

This article presents and defends a distinction between cultural and political sources of social identities. The term peoples will be used to refer to cultural collective entities; nations will be understood as groups whose primary source of self-identification is derived from their common democratic political aim. The distinction allows us to recognise cultural pluralism in modern democratic states without losing sight of the need for common democratic political self-awareness – a common national identity. It is able to avoid the problem of ‘nation-building’ through cultural assimilation of smaller groups, as well as to foster common political belonging without the pressure of cultural uniformity. In practical terms, moreover, separating between cultural and political social identities can provide a solid platform which will enable a democratic state to survive its own socio-cultural diversity and the perpetual movement of peoples throughout geographical space.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural groups
• peoples
• nations
• collective self-identification
• political identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Aleksandar Radaković holds a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research interests include democratic theory and nationalism, as well as the application of theory of collective rights of cultural groups to democratic states in international relations.

Notes

1 Namely, the etymological meaning of the word nation refers to that which has been born and it is originally derived from Latin nationem (and subsequently Old French nacion – birth, origin). In this regard, for example, it should correspond to the variation of the term narod or narodnost in Slavic languages; i.e. something that comes into existence through birth. However, in Slavic languages, narod or narodnost is commonly used to denote a people understood as an ethnic group in English (see Shanin, 1990). The word nation (nacija, natsiia) is sometimes used interchangeably with people (narod), but normally as a political identity group with its independent state (or a group striving to have one). Unlike in the English language, the term nationality is not used interchangeably with citizenship (and the usage of these two terms as synonymous in many languages complicates the matter additionally).

2 Although there is an overlap of categories at times between this article and the politics of identity literature, this work is not aiming to engage overmuch with the latter. See Connoly (2002), Tully (2003), Appiah (2005), and Alcoff, Hames-Garcia, Mohanty, and Moya (2006) for fruitful discussion on the politics of identity.

3 Tribal groups seem to be a good example of this since their membership is often characterised by an interconnected association of both cultural and political elements. Nevertheless, the very survival of various indigenous tribal groups after colonisation and incorporation into larger states lends to the conclusion that their collective identity is primarily cultural and only consequently political.

4 So as to avoid confusion, although the term nations (the USA) or First Nations (Canada) is nowadays used to refer to indigenous groups of North America, these will be treated as cultural groups throughout this paper because of their ability to maintain their identities even after the aforementioned effective loss of political sovereignty.

5 The classical definition of culture is well captured in Tylor's words as ‘that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’ (1871, Vol I, p. 1). It can be said that a cultural group (i.e. its identity) consists of these elements and that it emerges when shared participation in this complex socio-psychological whole compels us to recognise others in ourselves and vice versa in this relevant sense.

6 It is worth noting that these authors never directly associated themselves with this label and that they should not be confused with the new communitarian wave that developed during 1990's (see Etzioni, 1998).

7 Or ‘ethnocide’ as Anthony Smith (1986, p. 96) refers to it.

8 See also Berlin (1969; 1991) and Crowder (2002) for a related discussion on value pluralism.

9 This position possibly echoes a UDHR claim that ‘Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible’ (UN GA, 1948a, Art. 29, Para. 1).

10 Although I did not pursue that argument here, it is worth noting that membership in self-identifying cultural groups also contributes to individuals in another manner. Namely, as Stewart (2005, p. 188) notes, a person's well-being can be affected by how well the group they identify with is doing. For example, family members take pride in the achievements of children and co-nationals feel dignified for the prosperity of their political collectives. Correspondingly, the substandard standing of self-identifying collectives prevents individuals from developing their capabilities, while also leading to their psychological desolation due to the intricate identifying relationship with the (poor performing) collective. Stewart gives an example of African-Americans in the USA and their high level of depression that is associated with the standing of the groups as a whole. See also Brown et al. (2000).

11 For example, Denise Réaume identifies cultured society as a complex set of goods which involves ‘activities that not only require many in order to produce the good but are valuable only because of the joint involvement of many. The publicity of production itself is part of what is valued – the good is the participation’ (1988, p. 10).

12 It can be said that the idea of a social contract represented a theoretical articulation of the profound shift that was taking place in Europe at the time – an attempt to legitimise and explain why individuals ought to subject themselves to the governing authority, without making reference to a religiously constructed higher law. Even Machiavelli's Prince can be considered as an inquiry into endowing political power with unquestionable authority without making reference to religious principle (Hénaff, Morhange, & Allen, 1996; Lefort, 2012).

13 Capitalist-based economy established a new kind of market and social classes while the print industry provided means for dissemination of programmes and ideas in vernacular language.

14 In his more comprehensive account, Miller (1995, p. 27) claims that the concept of nation consists of five elements: a nation is a community (1) constituted by shared belief and mutual commitment, (2) extended in history, (3) active in character, (4) connected to a particular territory, and (5) marked off from other communities by its distinct public culture.

15 Kant, for example, argued that the abolishment of monarchical rule, apart from having a moral basis, would also gradually result in the establishment of perpetual peace. He wrote:

If, as must be so under this [republican, non-monarchical] constitution, the consent of the subjects is required to determine whether there shall be war or not, nothing is more natural than that they should weigh the matter well, before undertaking such a bad business. For in decreeing war, they would of necessity be resolving to bring down the miseries of war upon their country. (1991a, p. 122)

16 The democratic aspirations of the time were fortified in legal documents which (at least formally) claimed freedom and rights for all men, such as American Declaration of Independence (1776) and French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789).

17 This line of reasoning is well presented in the following speech excerpt given by Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery at the Anniversary Banquet of the Royal Colonial Institute, 1st of March 1893: ‘There are two schools who view with some apprehension the growth of our Empire. The first is composed of those nations who, coming somewhat late into the field, find that Great Britain has some of the best plots already marked out. To those nations I will say that they must remember that our colonies were taken – to use a well-known expression – at prairie value, and that we have made them what they are. We may claim that whatever lands other nations may have touched and rejected, and we have cultivated and improved are fairly parts of our Empire, which we may claim to possess by indisputable title. But there is another ground on which the extension of our Empire is greatly attacked … that our Empire is already large enough and does not need extension … We have to consider not what we want now, but what we shall want in the future. We have to consider what countries must be developed either by ourselves or some other nation, and we have to remember that it is part of our responsibility and heritage to take care that the world, as far as it can be moulded by us, shall receive the Anglo-Saxon and not another character … ’ (Bennett, 1962, pp. 310–311).

18 ‘In the Western world, in England and in France, in the Netherlands and in Switzerland, in the United States and in the British dominions, the rise of nationalism was a predominantly political occurrence; it was preceded by the formation of the future national state … Outside the Western world, in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia, nationalism arose not only later, but also generally at a more backward stage of social and political development: the frontiers of an existing state and of a rising nationality rarely coincided; nationalism, there, grew in protest against and in conflict with the existing state pattern – not primarily it into a people's state, but to redraw the political boundaries in conformity with ethnographic demands’ (Kohn, 2005, p. 329).

19 Müller (2012) also argues that constitutional patriotism is not in fact a variation of political/civic nationalism.

20 Throughout this paper, I consider that every ethnic group is a cultural group, but not that every cultural group is an ethnic group (i.e. that every ethnic identity is a cultural identity but not that every cultural identity is an ethnic identity). I here use it interchangeably only to stay faithful to the original texts, since in a European context and the European history of political ideas, the terms ethnic groups and cultural groups were frequently used synonymously.

21 The ethnic element is almost completely missing in the nation-states of the American continent, Australia and New Zealand. Furthermore, as Anthony Smith points out, ethnic communities do not have to possess political dimension, an attribute that seems indispensable for a nation. For more about this, see his distinction between Ethnie and nation (2010, pp. 10–16). Examples of multilingual nation-states are Belgium, Switzerland, and India.

22 This appears to be the latest and somewhat revised version of his standard definition of nation as ‘a named human community residing in a perceived homeland, and having common myths and a shared history, a distinct public culture, and common laws and customs for all members’ (2010, p. 13).

23 One could also argue that the converse is also true; namely, that a recognition of associative cultural beliefs, practices, or shared endorsement of a comprehensive doctrine is an integral part of the process whereby nationhood is endowed with legitimacy.

24 Perhaps less noticed, it also has some implications. For example, it is unable to explain how a single cultural group can be politically divided and yet preserve its principal (cultural) self-awareness. Or how members of cultural groups without the rights to participate in the governance of their ‘home’ nation-states can be considered genuine members of their ‘original’ cultural-political nation (e.g. national minorities in neighbouring states).

25 Hedetoft also makes a related remark by pointing out that while many academics debate about constitutive features of nations, they inaccurately ‘regard the state as extraneous to and not as an intrinsic part of the object [national identity]’ (2019, p. 366).

26 As an illustration, Serbs, Hungarians, Romani, Bosniaks, Croats, Romanians, Slovaks, etc. remain peoples (i.e. their respective cultural groups – narodi) when they create a nation (nacija). The aforementioned are not both cultural groups and nations because their cultural identity is not transformed into their political identity. They remain cultural groups in their own right when they create a political self-identifying group with a common democratic aim – the nation of the state of Serbia, in this particular case.

27 I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their feedback and useful comments.