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CIAO DATE: 03/02
Critical Review
Nation-States and States of Mind: Nationalism as Psychology
By Martin Tyrrell
Abstract
The rise of nationalism parallels that of the state, suggesting that the relationship between the two is symbiotic and that nations are neither natural nor spontaneous but rather are political constructions. Ernest Gellner's economically determinist account of the rise of the nation state, however, understates the emotive and psychological appeal of nationalist ideology. The Social Identity Theory of Henri Taifel, by contrast, suggests that nationalism benefits from possibly innate human tendancies to affiliate in social groups and to act in furtherance of these groups, while Serge Moscovici's social psychology of popular belief elucidates the means by which tendencies can take the shape of nationalism in mass publics.