**For the 29th annual ASEN conference taking place on 24-25 April, this week we have two featured articles related to the conference theme of nationalism and self-determination.**
Nationalism, Ethnicity and Self‐determination: A Paradigm Shift?
By Ephraim Nimni
Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 319-332
Abstract
An ongoing paradigm shift is giving birth to a more multidimensional understanding of the relationship between nationalism, sovereignty, self‐determination and democratic governance. A common element among the various versions of the new paradigm is the dispersal of democratic governance across multiple and overlapping jurisdictions. Governmental processes are no longer seen as discrete, centralised and homogenous (as in the old nation‐state model) but as asymmetrical, multilayered, multicultural and devolved into multiple jurisdictions. These changes have hardly affected the two main conceptual frameworks that dominate the study of nationalism: modernism and ethnosymbolism. As a result, these frameworks risk becoming irrelevant to the new forms of national self‐determination, asymmetrical governance and shared sovereignty. Modernism and ethnosymbolism insist that nationalism seeks to equate the nation with a sovereign state, while in reality the overwhelming majority of nations are stateless and unable to build nation states because they often inhabit territories shared with other nations. The paradigm shift occurs through the realisation that nation‐state sovereignty is no longer a feasible solution to the demands of stateless nations. Ethnosymbolism is in a much better position to adapt to the paradigm shift provided it abandons the claim that the nation state is the best shell for the nation.
Read the full article here.
The Relation between Imperialism and Nationalism in the German Empire and its Aftermath: A Bourdieusian Field Theoretical Perspective
By Juho Korhonen
Volume 18, Issue 2, pages 167-187
Abstract
In this article I explore the relation between empire and nationalism in the late German Empire and its aftermath. I argue, from the perspective of Bourdieusian field theory and the political field, that the transformation of the relation between empire and nationalism was connected to colonial expansion that prompted political actors to formulate ‘imperial policies’ aimed at subverting dominant power. The rise of national self‐determination following the First World War (WWI) thwarted this development by confining the political field into a national framework and separating nationalism from empire. This was the emergence of what Bourdieu called national metacapital that has the capacity to regulate and define other forms of capital and their exchange in an ideal‐type nation‐state, in contrast to imperial symbolic capital that mediates and connects other forms of capital.
Read the full article here.