review

According to Gellner, groups are bounded and maintained by an amalgam of two key motives, “two generic agents or catalysts of group formation and maintenance are obviously crucial: will, voluntary adherence and identification, loyalty, solidarity, on the one hand; and fear, coercion, compulsion, one the other” (Gellner, 2008, p. 52). Any of these elements cannot stand alone in making the nation formation a distinctive process. The will alone does not disguise the nation from the other groups, such as gangs, social clubs, etc. Similarly, cultural boundaries do not qualify to do so either, as they are not static neither homogeneous. The rapid reinforcement of a certain culture creates the impression that nationality is associated with having a common culture, which claim to be the traditional culture, however not all of the former elements was incorporated to the that culture, but this was a very selective process, and this selectivity is obvious in the case of language (Suny & Kennedy, 2001).

The nation can be defined according to the concepts of culture and will. Some of these circumstances are social and cultural, both are ought to be absorbed and standardized, and provided with a central protection that includes all of the nation’s members. At that point, the state’s culture that is integrated and validated will unite the population and make them identify with one another. Under such a culture, the nation would gain its members who would be sharing a mutual culture, and will maintain them through social organization and force (Suny & Kennedy, 2001). Gellner does not consider the state or nationalism to be universal and permanent, but culture and social organization are according to him universal (Gellner, 2008).

World War II h...

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... based in Europe, but in the Americas. Anderson believes that the first nation-states did not emerge on the basis of language, and it was not in Europe, but during the 18th and beginning of the 19th century in the Americas. It was known as colonial nationalism and also Creole-states. The linguistic question was to be avoided, as it was not a distinctive trait that the nationalist movement in the Americas could exploit as their enemies spoke the same tongue. On the contrary, the nationalist movement in the Americas was associating itself with the martyrs, who were not linked to them by any language. The nationalist movement’s leaders were from the bourgeoisie class. The political and economic theories and intellectual products of the Europe were reaching and flourishing in the Americas with the advancement in communication, the print and newspapers (Anderson, 2006).