300453 Nationalism Beyond Europe: Histories, Theories, Cases (MA PolSoz) (S) (SoSe 2021)

Course aims and learning objectives:

The concepts of nationalism and the nation presumed to be modern, expanding globally from a European core through geopolitically conditioned nation-state-formation processes. There is a general assumption that nations are imagined to be unified group that share common consciousness, history, economy and even ancestor—according to primordialism. It is obvious, however, that nationalism has been a homogenizing process at the expense of the premodern politico-social multiplicity, through nation-state institutions, by imposing an ‘appropriate ideology’, historicity, mythology, culture and so on, over entire population. Justified by for the good of the nation, the same process generally otherizes ‘minority groups’ deemed to be ‘non-appropriate’, by the official ideology. Whereas the conditions and confrontations in the West are constitutive of the global hegemony of nationalism, a causal-comparative exploration of the non-European experiences of nationalism can be a fertile ground to understand the elite-led resilience in, and social resistance to, the structures of nationalism. By casting a theoretical and historical light on nationalism beyond Europe, we aim to develop a critical understanding about the nationalist normativity, its built-in structures, mechanisms of justifications and resultant damages on social coexistence.
This theoretical and historical class embarks on a quest of exploring the multiple meanings of the nation, nationalism and the nation-state in a non-European framework with a particular focus on the ways in which their homogenizing expansion is confronted by the politico-social heterogeneity. Specifically, the course takes the reconstruction of conflictual and confronting nationalisms in West Asia and Sub Saharan Africa to illustrate the historically unsettled relations of nation-states, state-nations, ethnic and sectarian/religious groups. The objective of this course is twofold. First, we want to critically scrutinize and decode the naturalized, normalized and essentialized concepts such as ‘nation’, ‘nationalism’ or ‘minority’ and so on. Secondly, we want to critically engage with the historico-ideological destruction of ethno-religious multiplicity through ‘grand narrations’ and ‘enforced minoritizations’ in the selected non-European cases.