Ernest Gellner: Nationality

Ernest Gellner was Czech anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist. Explore interesting quotes on nationality.
Ernest Gellner: 64   quotes 0   likes

“I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs… on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music.”

Ernest Gellner

"Reply to Critics" in The Social Philosophy of Ernest Gellner

Alcohol , Books , Music , Way

“Tribalism never prospers, for when it does, everyone will respect it as a true nationalism, and no-one will dare call it tribalism.”

Ernest Gellner

Source: Nations and Nationalism (1983), Chapter 6, Social Entropy And Equality, p. 87

“In brief, nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires the ethnic boundaries should not be cut across political ones, and, in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state — a contingency already formally excluded by the principle in its general formulation — should not separate the power holders from the rest.”

Ernest Gellner

Source: Nations and Nationalism (1983), Chapter 1, Definitions, p. 1

“It is this which explains nationalism: the principle — so strange and eccentric in the age of agrarian cultural diversity and the 'ethnic' division of labour — that homogeneity of culture is the political bond, that mastery of (and, one should add, acceptability in) a given high culture … is the precondition of political, economic and social citizenship.”

Ernest Gellner

Nationalism (1997)

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