Nations and Nationalisms

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course takes on some grand notions related to the comparative study of nationalisms which are hardly intelligible without reference to the State and to democracy. The reflection unfolds in a thematic fashion in order to grasp the manner in which nationalist movements and the seemingly ethnic, cultural, and regional demands take form, to discern the actors that carry these views, and to detect the list of methods they use. After having presented the tools of social science that allow us to investigate the national question, we shall first see with what materials it is necessary to nation-build. These topics will be explored in succession, in their relation to nationalism: culture, memory, language, religion and ethnicity. In the second half of the class, we will study both the relationship between violence and nationalism and the diverse modalities of the management of democratic pluralism. This comparison will be central to the course and we will force ourselves to apply our theoretical reflection to specific cases, borrowed from different geographic areas and political contexts.